


Digging For Fire

by matchka



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: "we're not so different you & I", Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Recall, basically I wanted junkrat to join the good guys even though he's a shit, but not excusing them, idk if they'll be BFFS or something more than that, implied mccree/mercy, implied past tracer/widowmaker, learning how to belong, other pairings likely to pop up en route, shitty life experiences influencing bad behaviours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-08-18 16:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8168969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchka/pseuds/matchka
Summary: "What hits Tracer first is the smell, and swift on its heels the sudden, inappropriate nostalgia that bubbles up inside of her: bonfire night on Blackheath, the smell of burning wood and lighter fluid and cordite, the taste of toffee apple sweet on her tongue. And later, when the joy of childhood was a distant memory, the smell of burnt-out cars on the estate, charred leather and steel cooling in the winter air.The second thing is that his hair is on fucking fire."Junkrat and Roadhog end up in the wrong place at the wrong time and are taken captive by the fragmented remnants of Overwatch. Tracer finds herself accidentally leading the interrogation, and what begins as a frantic attempt to glean information becomes a strange alliance, as the Junkers learn what's it like to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and Overwatch learn just how difficult it is to get soot stains out of soft furnishings.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic started as nothing more complicated than my brain yelling "HEY I THINK TRACER AND JUNKRAT WOULD PROBABLY GET ON PRETTY WELL IF THE CIRCUMSTANCES ALLOWED FOR IT." So, uh, then I decided to write about that. And here's the start. I hope you like it.
> 
> "And I often ask her  
> Are you looking for the mother lode?  
> Huh? No.  
> No my child, this is not my desire  
> And then she said  
> I'm digging for fire"

The look on Mercy’s face as Tracer shuffles, bone-weary and footsore and bruised, into the hangar speaks of no small degree of inconvenience in her immediate future. She settles onto the nearest convenient crate, stretching her aching calves; her toes flex inside her shoes, still spattered with the drying blood of an injured ally. She isn’t sure which one. There was a lot of blood this time.

“Is everyone all right?” Tracer asks.

Mercy sighs. The pads of her fingers press against her forehead, rubbing in tight little circles. “Well, nobody is in any _immediate_ danger of dying,” she says, as though this is as optimal an outcome as they might have hoped for. Her clothes are bejewelled with drying crimson, with soot and dirt and a splash of some unidentifiable organic matter. Tracer wonders why she always insists on wearing white on the battlefield. “So far, I have removed four bullets - three of which from a single individual’s thigh. I have burns to treat, and at least one fractured femur to set.” She scans Tracer cursorily with red-rimmed eyes, the quick and practised judgement of an overworked medic. “Thank goodness you’re quick enough to stay out of bother.”

“More luck than judgement this time.” She can still hear pulse fire thunderous in her ears, the searing heat of a barely-missed bullet. Absently, she touches her wrist, thumb outlining an ancient scar; old fractures beneath pink-knitted skin, a jigsaw of long-healed bone. She hasn’t always been quick enough.

“And there’s another thing.”  

Ah, Tracer thinks. Ah, here it is, here’s where the good doctor lays out her demands – _Tracer, I need you to fly to some ungodly destination to procure some mysterious potion or Jesse’s face is going to fall off._

“We’ve taken a prisoner,” Mercy says.

Tracer sits upright. “What? Why?” The capture of enemy combatants is not unheard of, but unusual enough to pique her curiosity; what could be so unusual about a person that Winston would authorise their capture, their detainment – and here, of all places: their inner sanctum, this iron-clad fortress built into Gibraltar’s honey-coloured rock. Their home, as much as anywhere might be called ‘home’ now. “Are they Talon?”

Mercy’s face is wan with fatigue, her smooth skin creased about the eyes. She is not yet forty, but in this moment she looks older. “We don’t know,” she says. “Certainly, their presence in Ilios coincided with Talon’s arrival, but…something doesn’t quite fit. I’m not convinced they were acting in Talon’s interests, and that in of itself is interesting.”

“They,” Tracer repeats. “As in, more than one?”

“Two,” Mercy says. “A pair, it would seem.”

“And you don’t have a clue who they’re working for?”

“We don’t know anything at all,” Mercy says. “One of them has been kept sedated since he arrived. As much for his own safety as ours. He’s large, and aggressive, and he didn’t take kindly to being captured. The other…well…” She turns pale eyes to Tracer, wide and beseeching. “I need you to talk to him,” she says.

“Me?” it’s different from the usual fetch quests she gets sent on, she’ll say that much. But there is scant appeal in exchanging chit-chat with a presumably violent captive. A violent _male_ captive. A violent male captive whose companion has been tranqued into compliance. “You’re seriously asking me to interrogate a prisoner? I really don’t think I’m built for that sort of thing, Mercy, I…I’ve got this _mouth_ on me, you see, and…”

“I know,” Mercy says, and she does; she’s been on the wrong end of Tracer’s spitfire mouth before. “I know, and you’re right, but you will also note that as the only ambulatory member of this organisation _not_ presently involved in saving lives, you’re really the only option we have. And also…” She sighs, and the downward slope of her shoulders suggests she can’t quite believe she’s having this conversation. “Well. We think we successfully removed all bombs from his person, but there’s a very remote chance he might still be hiding some. Given the circumstances…and given your abilities, I’m confident you’ll be safer in his presence than Winston or I.”

“Bombs,” Tracer repeats, flat.

“Grenades, actually,” Mercy says, as though that makes everything better. “Please don’t worry, Lena. You can handle this, and I really am very confident that he has no more explosives to hand. And I will be only moments away from you.”

“Mercy…”

She places a placatory hand on Tracer’s shoulder, gentle. Maternal, almost. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t a desperate situation. If things weren’t such a mess right now.” Mercy works so hard, Tracer thinks, glancing at the scrubbed-raw skin of her hands. She does so much, and Tracer feels shame coil in her stomach like something live. 

“Grenades. Fucking _hell,_ ” Tracer mutters, allowing Mercy to lead her towards the infirmary, where her prisoner awaits.

*

The isolation room is ill-lit, cast in shades of bruise blue. What hits Tracer first is the smell, and swift on its heels the sudden, inappropriate nostalgia that bubbles up inside of her: bonfire night on Blackheath, the smell of burning wood and lighter fluid and cordite, the taste of toffee apple sweet on her tongue. And later, when the joy of childhood was a distant memory, the smell of burnt-out cars on the estate, charred leather and steel cooling in the winter air.

The second thing is that his hair is on fucking fire.

“Jesus Christ.” She scans the room for a fire extinguisher, a blanket, anything to put out the flames. The room is completely empty except for the bed upon which he sits – calmly smouldering, as if this is an entirely normal turn of events – and a single chair. She’s about to yell out for a responsible adult when the man on fire speaks.

“G’day.”

She pauses mid-motion, arms raised, still fumbling for a non-existent extinguisher. He’s slouched against the wall, long legs extended - no, wait, _leg_ , because one of them is in fact a crude, peglike prosthetic tacked on to a truncated femur. No shirt, which seems to be a conscious choice on his part. His skin has a peculiar blue-black sheen which she realises is soot, and motor oil, and this does nothing to quell her concern over his hair, merrily flickering away like a nest of candles.

She must stare a little too long, because he reaches up, grinning. “Ah, it’s gone up again, has it?” Bony fingers quest through the wild yellow corona of his hair, tracing strips of bare scalp where the hair has burned away. He doesn’t seem troubled by the flames licking at his skin. “Don’t worry, love, it does that from time to time. S’alright, I’m not gonna explode or nothing. Your monkey friend was real specific on that.”

“Winston,” Tracer says, because although he is indisputably a primate there’s something uncomfortably pejorative about calling him ‘monkey’.

“That’s the fella.” His accent is strange. She can’t quite place it; long, drawn-out vowels and lopped off consonants, a lilt like mutated Irish. Australian, perhaps; you don’t meet many people from that corner of the world, not any more. Not since everything went to shit out there.

“Doesn’t that…” Tracer indicates her own scalp with a wave of her fingers. “Doesn’t that _hurt_?”

“Mm? Nah. Don’t even notice it half the time.” He seems unable to sit still even for a moment; fingers fidget ceaselessly, picking at the frayed cuffs of his shorts, the empty pouches on the bandoliers slung across his shoulders. His left hand clanks as he pries at the loose sole of his only boot; she’s not sure if it’s some kind of rudimentary gauntlet or another prosthetic. “I’m thinkin’ that’s not what you came in here to ask, though, am I right? So why don’t you pull up a pew and we can have a natter?”

He’s too casual, too amiable, and the constant nervous energy of him is unnerving; she sits down, scooting the chair backwards so there’s a strip of empty floor between them. She scans him surreptitiously for a stray grenade, the glint of a firing pin tucked into a grubby palm. The perpetual motion of him makes it difficult to track. Tracer clears her throat. She hates how edgy she feels. “What’s your name?” she asks.

“Junkrat.”

“That’s not a name.”

“It’s _my_ name.”

She makes a face. “It’s not on your birth certificate though, is it?”

“Don’t have one of those, so who knows?” The odd thing is, he’s not being confrontational. Difficult, yes, and there’s a glint in his eye which suggests he’s enjoying that. But everything about his posture, his expression, is relaxed. It’s all a bit of fun to him. “This is your first time interrogating a prisoner, right?”

Tracer’s hackles rise at that. “What makes you so sure?”

“’Cos you’re bloody awful at it.” He’s got a grin like a bear trap: all sharp teeth, and too many of them. Atop his head, the flames have died down to embers, smouldering at the very tips of his hair. It’s uncanny, the way it burns, the way he smokes; a ragged, steel-limbed Guy ready for the bonfire.

In fairness, Tracer thinks, she walked right into that one; questioning her professionalism has always been an easy way to wind her up. He can’t possibly have known that; he’s making lucky guesses, jabbing blindly in the dark until he hits the right spot. And Tracer’s buttons are easy to push.

Well. It wasn’t like she didn’t warn Mercy about her damn mouth.

Tracer inhales. Holds it at her centre, the way Amelie taught her: _be calm. Be mindful_. Imagining Amelie’s hand gentle between her shoulder blades, warm fingers pentacled against her spine, her ribs. _Exhale. Let the anger go. You don’t need it._ It’s not his fault; she’s been thrown in here like a carcass to a wolf, and she’s lucky that this one prefers to play with his food. She’s met worse.

“Okay. Junkrat, then.” She can’t deny it’s appropriate: he smells like a petrol station forecourt, the sharp sourness of gasoline and the tang of rusted steel. Long, sharp features, perhaps more vulpine than rodent, but it’s hard to tell under all that soot. “Are you working for Talon?”

“Straight for the jugular, eh?” He’s got keen eyes, bright and inquisitive in the dim light. His gaze passes over her shoes, still spattered with dried blood, up to her face; predatory, though not in the way she’s come to expect from men. More like a hungry animal. “Okay, I’ll give you a deal. You get two free answers, but the rest you’re gonna have to pay for, you know? Nothing good comes free, and I’ve got the good stuff.” He pauses. “Information, I mean. You took all the rest of my stuff.”

“We don’t bargain with prisoners.” It’s a line she’s lifted straight from McCree’s playbook, and she tries to apply it with the same deadpan precision he might – though she suspects it’s marginally less effective in her high, girlish voice. “Are you with Talon?”

“All right.” He extends an index finger. “That’s question number one. I got nothing to do with Talon. Eh, that’s not true, I blew a coupla trucks up. Don’t think they were best pleased about that, but what can you do? Not like you can ask nicely to shift ‘em. Couple of kilos of boom-boom does the job nicely. Makes a lovely mess too. Lots of pickings to be had, if you’re quick enough. Sorry, love, what were you asking again?”

She blinks. She’s pretty sure he hasn’t taken a single breath; he’s unleashed an entire verbal tsunami in one long exhalation. “I asked if you were working for Talon.”

“Talon! Right, right. No, I don’t give a stuff about Talon, ‘cept for when they get in my bloody way. Same with your lot. What’s your deal, anyway? What d’you call yourselves?”

Tracer shuts down her instinctive response just in time. They’re not Overwatch any more, are they? Not in any meaningful sense. No, they’re a bunch of nostalgia addicts, overgrown kids playing cops and robbers and pretending that it still matters. Suddenly, she’s exhausted; aware, horribly, of her aching muscles and bruised bones, the droop of her eyelids. She inhales, breathing in the stale, unwashed smell of her own body.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. She must sound as tired as she feels, because suddenly this Junkrat character is eyeing her with renewed curiosity. He’s tricky to interpret; is he the kind of creature who preys on weakness? “If you don’t work for Talon, then what were you doing in Ilios? It seems like a weird coincidence.”

“Is that question number two?”

She sighs. Lets her spine slacken against the back of the chair. Her undershirt is riding up over her belly, her jacket too warm in this stuffy little room. She resents Mercy just enough to feel guilty about it. “I already told you. We’re not playing this game.”

“Game? No, no, it’s a legit transaction, no game about it. Listen, I’ve given you plenty of info already, and I’ve not asked for so much as a penny. I’m a man of my word, you know? So go on. Ask me another.”

“Why were you in Ilios?”

He grins. A gold tooth glimmers momentarily. “We had a tip-off,” he says, leaning forward; conspiratorial, like he’s sharing something incredibly important and she’s in on the secret. “Me ‘n Roadie. Something real valuable. So, off we go with our trusty explosives…”

“You were going to steal it?”

“ _Technically_ that’s a third question, but you’re such a good sport I’ll let you have it. ‘Course we were gonna steal it. Not like you can just rock up and ask ‘em.” He shifts his legs; his prosthetic looks ungainly, ill-suited to movement. “We never found it, anyway, so you can stop looking at me like that. Besides, since you’re so interested in this Talon bunch I reckon you’d be pretty interested in what we _did_ find.”  

“And what was that?”

“Yeah, nah.” Junkrat slings an arm across the top of his head, pillowing the back of his skull against the infirmary wall. She wonders if he’ll leave soot stains. “Sorry. Already gave you three answers. I’d be letting you rob me blind if I gave you any more free info.”

Irritation flares up inside of her. “I asked what you were doing in Ilios, and all you’ve given me so far is some guff what you _didn’t_ do. You can’t just fob me off with half an answer and expect me to be happy about it. That’s not playing fair.”

She half expects him to come back with some childish retort – _my game, my rules_ , maybe – but he just nods, grin pared back now to an almost absent smile. “Fair enough,” he says. “Better at this than I thought you’d be. All right then. I’ll show you.” His metallic hand snakes into his pocket, and if he notices that her hands are suddenly at her pistols, her eyes trained on the motion of his fingers, he’s not troubled by it. He emerges with a crumpled piece of paper, soot-smeared and charred at the edges. It reminds Tracer of the treasure maps she used to make in primary school – staining paper with tea, watching with excitement as the teacher burned the corners with a lighter. He leans forward to hand her the paper, and she takes it, hesitant, plucking it from between his extended fingers like it’s something venomous.

Delicately, she unfolds it.

*

“I don’t quite understand,” Mercy says. The paper Junkrat handed over is spread out on the clinic table. It’s a crude map, that much is obvious: the lines are inexpertly drawn but it appears to depict a series of tunnels beneath Ilios, a network of caves built into the cliff edge, boring deep into the rock and beneath the town. In classic pirate style, an ‘X’ marks their intended destination. Beyond that, it’s gibberish; Junkrat’s notes seem to have been written in a different language, so impenetrable is his scrawl. Perhaps that’s intentional. “Is he suggesting that Talon were looking for something beneath Ilios?”

“I don’t really know,” Tracer says. She’s freshly showered, her hair neatly combed and glistening wet; she’s acutely aware now of a thousand little niggles, bruises she doesn’t remember attaining. This is not unusual; in the heat of battle - manipulating the present and the past until time is entirely relative, an intoxicating melange of _has been_ and _could be_ – she finds it impossible to keep track of all the minor injuries, all the knocks and sprains. “I know him and the other one were looking for some kind of treasure. Something valuable, he said. But they didn’t find it. I’m guessing they ran into Talon instead. He says he blew up a couple of their trucks.”

From his seat beside her, McCree gives a little grunt of approval. He’s wrapped up good and proper like a Halloween mummy, and Tracer knows that beneath the gauze he’s black and blue. He can barely sit up, but he’s a stubborn mule, and she knows he doesn’t like to show weakness in front of Mercy. It’s a pride thing, sure. Everyone knows that: McCree is tough as old boots, and he’s big on demonstrating it. But it’s also a kindness. Mercy worries so much – about everyone, but especially about him.

“But we don’t know what they were looking for,” Mercy says.

“No.”

“Does he?”

Tracer sighs. “He won’t let on. Apparently, I get two free questions, and the rest I’ve got to pay for. I already told him we won’t negotiate, but he’s pretty insistent on that.”

Mercy’s mouth is a thin, disapproving line. “What could he possibly want?”

“Money, probably.” McCree’s jacket is slung loosely over his shoulders; he pats down his pockets, looking for cigarettes Mercy has probably confiscated. “Usually is with that type.”

There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence. The elephant in the room: there is no money. Not really. They have Winston’s tech, a functioning dropship, enough petty cash to feed them and run the place. But this isn’t like the glory days of Overwatch; the world still needs them – perhaps more than ever - but it’s too self-righteous to acknowledge it.

There’s no good reason for any of them to be here. Each of them – Mercy, McCree, Winston, Reinhardt, Genji – they’ve gravitated back towards this fractured organisation, patching up the holes with hard work and goodwill, because what else would they do? What place is there for them now, in this world? There is no ‘normal’ any more, not for them. Tracer understands this perhaps better than anyone.

She drags herself forcibly out of the mire of her own thoughts. “We don’t necessarily need his information,” she says. “We’ve got a map. Can’t we just go down there ourselves? See what we can find?”

“The cave system beneath Ilios is vast,” Mercy says. “We could be searching blindly for days. Besides which, we’d be easy targets should Talon decide to return.” She turns the map sideways, upside down; it’s hard enough to work out how to get to Junkrat’s intended target, let alone interpret the rest of the squiggles and scrawls. “No, I think the first thing we ought to ascertain is what exactly Talon’s goal might have been, and whether it’s worth our while searching to begin with.” She gets up from her seat. She too is freshly clean, changed into pale green surgical scrubs. Her face is entirely without makeup, yet she looks perfectly serene; weary, but still beautiful. “I’ll talk to him,” she says.

“Fair warning,” Tracer says. “He doesn’t shut up. I think his mouth operates on automatic.”

Mercy quirks an amused eyebrow. In the corner of her eye, Tracer sees McCree stifle a smirk. “Oh,” Mercy says, with a smile. “I think I’m quite used to that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's my personal headcanon that junkrat's internal monologue is largely processed via the medium of his mouth.

Apparently, he’s never been on a proper plane before. Apparently he’s never flown in anything with windows, because his face is pressed up against the glass like an excited schoolkid at a safari park, staring in awe at the vast grey-blue ocean thousands of feet below. He doesn’t even seem to mind that he’s handcuffed to his seat.

“Look at all that water,” Junkrat says.

And of course Tracer is babysitting him. Of _course_ she’s been elected to sit on her arse and listen to him yap on and on, like a terrier chasing a squirrel up a tree. On one hand, it’s nice to play the passenger for a change; it’s not often she gets to watch leisurely as the lumpen, grey-green landmass that is northern Europe gives way, slowly but definitely, to honey-coloured rock: long, trailing archipelagos dissipating into the warm azure of the Mediterranean. On the other hand:

“…what do you suppose is down there, anyway? You think people live there? Like, towns and houses and all that? Do you lot move wherever you like, y’know, don’t you have border controls, and…what’s it called…the thing they put up in Russia, er, with the tanks and the barbed wire and stuff…”

Dear gods, she thinks, glancing over at a sympathetic-looking Reinhardt. She swears she’ll take a vow of silence, she’ll be as quiet as a mouse forevermore if only someone will come and save her from this relentless earbashing. “The wall,” she supplies. “The Red Zone, people call it. No, we pretty much have complete freedom of movement in Europe. People mostly live wherever they want to.”

“Imagine that,”Junkrat says, a little awed. “Anywhere they like. That’s a sweet setup.”

“It’s…pretty normal,” Tracer says. He’s so confusing; he’s a violent thief with a worrying enthusiasm for explosives, yet he displays an almost childish excitement over the weirdest things. It’s like the world is endlessly surprising to him. “I suppose we don’t even really think about it.”

“Must be great though, eh?” They haven’t permitted him weapons yet. It was agreed almost unanimously that he’s still too much of an unknown quantity to trust with anything dangerous. He’s here as a guide, nothing more, and he seems to have accepted those terms with minimal fuss. She’s a little suspicious about that, but he’s got one leg, and potentially just the one arm, and he appears to weigh about as much as she does. How much mischief can he possibly get up to?

He’d asked if his friend might come along too. At least, Tracer assumes they’re friends. He’s yet to explain the nature of their partnership, and the other man – ‘Roadhog’, according to Junkrat, because apparently Australians don’t have proper names – has barely said more than three words since the lorazepam wore off. But Roadhog is very big, and probably less than pleased about having been tranqued, and despite Junkrat’s enthusiastic endorsement it seems that nobody is keen on letting him tag along.

Junkrat tips a nod in Mercy’s direction. “Your guardian angel doesn’t think much of me, does she?”

“Well, that’s ‘cos you wouldn’t talk to her,” Tracer says. “She thinks you’re belligerent.”

“What, me?” He feigns offence, but his eyes are bright with mirth. “Nah, she’s just a bit frosty, ain’t she? She’s one of them ‘no shirt, no service’ types. I can see it a mile off.” He thumps a fist against his bare sternum. In the stark light of the hold she can better appraise his soot-streaked physique. He’s got the lean, wiry musculature of a hungry jackal, perhaps a meal or two away from starvation; the concavity of his waist and sharp jut of hipbones looks almost painful. She wonders when he last ate. “Some bedside manner she’s got.”

“Mercy’s one of the nicest people I know,” Tracer says, quite sincerely. She’s surprised at how defensive she feels. She realises she has mentally divided the occupants of this plane into two categories: _one of us_ and _outsider_. The latter category has a single occupant. “She was probably just put off by the way you smell.”

His face creases into a frown. “I don’t smell, do I?” He lifts his arms as far as his cuffs will allow, sniffing the air, and in that moment he resembles his namesake; nose twitching, eyes bright and curious. “All right, maybe a bit. But that’s an occupational hazard, right? Ain’t my fault I smell like a petrol station.”

“Yeah, and the rest,” Tracer says. Beneath his industrial perfume is the hint of old sweat, the distinct musk of one who has spent several days running around in the same clothes. “Look at you. You’re covered in muck. Never heard of a shower?”

He gives her a strange look. “Water’s for drinking.” It’s as serious as she’s seen him up until now. She wonders what button she’s managed to press. How she can store the knowledge away to use again later. And then she realises he hasn’t spoken in over thirty seconds, and she hardly dares to breathe because this sudden silence is a gift she hadn’t dared hope for since they first set foot on this fucking plane.

She puts her head back. Lets the dull roar of the engine seep into the newly-quiet chamber of her skull, a soothing and familiar hum.

*

Bringing Junkrat along for the ride had never been part of the plan.

A course of events was set into motion the moment Mercy emerged from the isolation room, shoulders slumped in defeat. McCree and Tracer lifted their heads, momentarily abandoning their card game.

“I’m sorry,” Mercy said. “You’ll have to go back in.”

Tracer laid her hand face down on the table, slowly. “What happened? Wouldn’t he talk?”

“He just sang. The same song, over and over. Something about a bird laughing in a gum tree. God, I think I’ll still be hearing it in my sleep tonight.” Mercy slipped into the empty chair beside McCree, gently steepling her fingers to her forehead. She looked just about ready to throw in the towel. “It was almost as painful as Jesse singing in the shower.”

“Hey now,” McCree protested.

“I told you before,” Tracer said. She scooped up McCree’s cards and her own, shuffling them into the rest of the pack. A small part of her revelled in the satisfaction that he would now never know how close he’d come to thrashing her at gin rummy. “He won’t tell me anything else unless it’s in exchange. And unless anyone fancies flogging a load of our stuff on the internet, I’m pretty sure we’re not in any position to exchange anything.”

“You could offer privileges,” McCree suggested. “Hot food, access to showers, that kind of thing.”

“Jesse, no,” Mercy sounded mildly appalled. “Those are basic rights. He’s a captive, but he’s still a human being. No, we’ll ask him what it is he wants. We’ll make it clear that there are no guarantees he’ll actually receive it. Tracer, try to frame it in such a way that it sounds like mere curiosity. I don’t want him to think we’re desperate.”

Tracer frowned. “Are we?”

“No,” McCree said. Tracer glanced over at Mercy, who chewed her lip and said nothing. “I’d guess it’s dead end information. Not suggestin’ it’s deliberate. More like he just doesn’t know what we’d consider valuable. Ain’t much sense in playing our whole hand yet.”

Of course, they _were_ desperate, much as McCree might try to dismiss the idea. They were forever two steps behind Talon, uncertain what their endgame might be, when and where they’d next make a move. There had been a time when other matters had taken up a share of their collective attentions – when other threats to peace and harmony had been attended to with the same zeal as they approached Talon. That was before Amelie.

“Fine. All right.” Tracer stood, adjusting the position of her chronal accelerator so it sat flush against her sternum. “I’m not promising anything though, right? Just to be on the safe side, maybe we should try flogging a few bits and pieces. I hear the market’s good for manky old cowboy hats right now.”

“Y’know sweetheart.” McCree’s smile was wry and indulgent. “That mouth of yours is gonna get you in big trouble someday.”

She swept an imaginary hat from her head, bowing deep. “And on that day, Jesse, you’ll sweep in on horseback and rescue me, because you _know_ it just wouldn’t be the same around here without me and my big mouth.”

*

“Oh, hey,” Junkrat said, from his position lounging upside-down on the bed. “You look different without all your gear on. Didn’t realise you had a face and everything.”

Tracer’s hands strayed instinctively to her hips. “Why wouldn’t you talk to Mercy?”

“She’s not as nice to me as you are. You talk to me like I’m a person.” He swivelled around, a surprisingly fluid motion; suddenly he was the right way up again, peg leg tucked beneath him in a strange quarter-lotus. His hair was wildly askew, but thankfully not on fire. Not even smouldering this time. “I mean, look, I understand I’m a prisoner here and that’s fine, y’know? Can’t have everything your way. But I didn’t much fancy the way she barged in here making demands.”

Tracer blinked. He might have been describing anyone in the world but Mercy. Sure, she could be stern; you had to be in her profession, to some degree at least – and doubly so with the collection of stubborn idiots presently housed at the Watchpoint. But barging in, making demands? Christ, Tracer thinks. The pressure of it all must be bearing down on her like a ton of bricks.

“You’re not so bad, though.” His smile was unreasonably sunny. “I s’pose your guardian angel’s sent you in here to do a spot of prying.”

“Wow, no flies on you.” She looked around for the chair and realised it was now beside the bed, housing Junkrat’s singular boot. His foot, she noted, was wrapped in well-worn bandages as opposed to a sock. “Look, Junkrat, I’m going to be straight with you. You baited the hook well and now they’re in a flap trying to work out if it’s worth us hunting down whatever Talon were after. I’m not good at this interrogation business. You’ve already said as much, so I’m not going to waste both our time pretending. There’s nothing on this base of any value, so paying you is right out. But I want to know what you saw.”

“Well, that’s direct,” he said, with something a little like approval. He appraised her momentarily with eyes the colour of embers. She stood with her spine straight, betraying no fear; she had no weapons, no means of recourse if he suddenly dropped the affable weirdo act. If it _was_ an act. “Tell you what, then. There’s other means of exchange, not just money and shiny things. Plenty of other ways to pay for information, right?”

Tracer’s stomach momentarily soured. Her stance did not falter as she looked him dead in the eye. “Such as?”

He extended the long fingers of his good hand, counting off the possibilities. “Scrap,” he said. “Scrap’s a goodun. Most Junkers’ll sell their mum for a good haul. Not me, though, ‘cos mine’s dead. Heh. Then there’s protection, but I’ve got Roadie for that. Sometimes an I.O.U’ll work out, but you’ve got to know a person well enough to be sure they’re not gonna cheat you.” Their eyes met briefly. Long enough for Tracer to comprehend his meaning: _I’m playing nice but you shits still kidnapped me._ “Ask me, though, best thing you can exchange for information if you ain’t got the funds is more information.”

Her wire-taut shoulders relaxed, just a little. “What sort of information?”

“Ah, all kinds. You never know what’ll come in handy down the line. But seeing as how you keep coming to visit, how about let’s start with your name?”

“Oh.” She flushed, then, because she’d forgotten her manners, and a part of her had never really shaken off that strict world she’d been born into – _be polite, Lena, and gracious, and don’t forget to curtsey, there’s a good girl._ And after haranguing him about his own moniker too. “You can call me Tracer,” she said.

His fingers fluttered in a delicate little wave. “G’day Tracer.”

She waved back, a little awkwardly. It seemed the appropriate thing to do. “Hello, Junkrat.”

“There. That’s a lot nicer.” Behind him, on the wall, were twin blots of soot; one a wide, diffuse smear, the other a single, dark point. He must have been resting his feet against the wall. It seemed interesting to Tracer that despite his enforced confinement and, by extension, immobility, he had not removed his prosthetic. “Not substantial enough to loosen my lips on that Talon business, but it’s a start.”

“Fine. Take your payment, then.”

He seemed to mull it over for a moment. It would be about Overwatch, she thought. He’d want to gauge their interest in Talon, get the measure of these strange people who’d plucked him up while he was innocently going about his business. She could tell he wasn’t stupid, though you might be forgiven for thinking so: perhaps the beartrap grin and almost manic cheer were just a clever disguise. Perhaps they were entirely incidental.

Junkrat pointed at the chronal accelerator. “What’s that glowing thing do?”

Irrational indignation flared up inside of her like a firework. “Why’d you want to know?”

He gave an innocent shrug. “I figured it was part of your uniform or whatever. But look, you’re in your civvies and you’re still wearing it. Tells me it’s important. So what’s it do?”

_Stop,_ she told herself. _He’s riled you up again. Calm down._ “It’s called a chronal accelerator,” she said, carefully modifying the tone of her voice so as not to give the game away. She still couldn’t tell if these little jabs were deliberate or not. Perhaps they weren’t jabs at all; maybe he’d just been dubiously blessed with casual bluntness. “There’s a whole lot of science behind it, but the basic purpose is to keep the wearer anchored in the present time. Something to do with adjusting the speed at which atoms move to prevent displacement.” She tapped the glass with her index finger. “Or to induce it, if you’re smart about it.”

Junkrat leaned forward. The cyan glow from the accelerator cast an eerie underwater glow, diffusing out into the dark confines of the room; deep shadows cut into the hollows of his cheeks, beneath his eyes, outlining the stark contours of his skull. “Like a portable time machine, then.”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“Pretty snazzy. So why’d you have to wear it?”

Tracer’s mouth curved up into a smirk. “Sorry mate. You asked what it did, and I told you. You want to know more, it’ll cost you another piece of information. And I don’t need to remind you that you already owe me.” She held out a hand, indicating that it was time to pay up.

“Hah. Fair enough.” He stretched his arms high above his head, revealing a concertina of ribs; a series of clicks and pops issued from his spine. Tracer might have winced if she weren’t so familiar with the sound. “Right. So when we was snooping about in those tunnels, we happened upon this big old cave. Looked like someone’d been living in it pretty recently, but by the time we turned up your Talon mates’d done a number on the place. I reckon they must’ve really wanted to get their hands on whoever was hiding there. Shit luck on their part that your lot turned up then.”

“Was there any sign of who it might have been?”

Junkrat shook his head. “Some religious bloke, I’d guess. Loads of candles, some sort of…” he twirled his metal hand, a vague gesture “…rug thing. I dunno. Going to all that fuss, though. I guess he must be important.”

Tracer racked her brains, but they seemed to have temporarily shut down; an exhausted fog had begun to seep in, eroding the circuitry. She had not slept in close to twenty four hours and the adrenaline that had kept her standing was slowly draining away, leaving only tightly-strung muscles and sharp grit beneath her eyelids. Nope. Not a clue. Perhaps Mercy or Winston might have a more encyclopaedic knowledge of Talon’s admittedly furtive intentions.

“You reckon you could point out that cave on your map?” Tracer asked.

“Honestly?” He shoved a thumb between his teeth, worrying at the nail. Tracer didn’t want to think too hard about what might be under there. “Nah, don’t think so. Short-term memory’s always been a bit of a problem for me, heh. Needs a bit of prompting to get it working. Y’know what might work, though…”

“What?”

“You’ll never go for it.”

Irritation rose. She swallowed it down. “Try me.”

“Well. I usually remember things better when I can see them.” He tapped a finger against the side of his skull. His hands were broad and raw-boned; they looked as though they’d been fashioned out of wire and draped in skin. “Very visual memory. Good with faces, crap with names, that sort of thing. I reckon I could show you where we went if I was back down there. ‘Course, that would mean letting me out to play, and I’m thinking you lot won’t fancy that much.”

Was it some kind of a play? It was impossible to read his body language; the speed and cadence of his speech made it difficult to interpret. She’d never really encountered anyone like Junkrat before, someone so unselfconsciously ebullient even in the face of captivity. He wasn’t even angry at them, though Tracer thought he’d probably have the right. And yet as difficult as he was to read, Tracer couldn’t help but think he was being perfectly sincere. Call it a gut feeling.

Besides. What other option did they really have?

“Let me talk with Mercy,” she said.

*

They disembark in the bright afternoon sunshine, a little way south of the main port. According to Junkrat, the entrance to the cave network begins about a mile out of town, tucked away in the cliffside above a small sandy cove. It’s the kind of place Tracer imagines a smuggler might hide away in, sheltered by a narrow horseshow of sheer rock. There’s always been a certain terrible romance about pirates for her, a fascination carried over from the adventure stories she devoured as a child. She runs a hand over the weathered, salt-whipped rock; it’s strangely smooth beneath her callused fingers. She feels like she shouldn’t be here, and there’s a strange thrill in that.

“I’ll keep watch,” Mercy says. She’s got her blaster at her hip, an earpiece with which she and Tracer can communicate. She looks better, somehow; it’s like the sunlight suits her, illuminating alabaster skin, playing off the white gold of her hair. Her stance is upright, betraying no trace of fatigue. Tracer isn’t sure if it’s because she’s had a solid night’s sleep, or because she’s got something concrete to focus her energies on. Mercy thrives with purpose. She was not made to meander the way some do, drifting from task to task. She is driven, and Tracer envies and fears this trait in equal measures. “How long will it take to get to this cave?”

“It’s not so far. Twenty minutes? I dunno. Depends how many times I get lost.” Junkrat sits cross-legged on the ground, apparently basking in the sun. He grins up at Tracer. She is not reassured. “No need to worry yourself. We’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Mercy casts Tracer a querying glance: _are you sure you’re all right with this?_ They’ve left Reinhardt with the plane – it’s hardly inconspicuous, and it’s better to play safe. Besides which, his fractured leg won’t allow him a great deal of mobility, though of course he insists he is absolutely fine. Bringing him along today has been a necessary salve to his heroic ego. All of which means she’s on her own.

Tracer nods her assent. She’s tougher than she looks. “All right,” she says. “Mercy, I’ve switched to comms channel, so keep in touch if you see anything dodgy. Let’s go, Junkrat.”

He’s a little stop-start as he gets to his feet, like his arms and legs aren’t quite communicating with his brain; his limbs are an untidy gangle, and as he unfolds to his full height – just for a moment, because he recedes quickly into a semi-hunch – he reminds her of an enormous heron. He’s far taller on his feet than she’d imagined he might be. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your tour of the Bloody Dark Caves. My name’s Junkrat and I’ll be your guide.” He sweeps a theatrical arm. “After you.”

Tracer glances over her shoulder. In the mouth of the cave, framed by sunlight, Mercy’s hair is a pale and brilliant halo. It’s hard to believe, sometimes, that this porcelain angel is one of the strongest people Tracer knows. Hard to believe that she carries such a profound fragility inside of her.

*

The cave smells sharp, like old brine; the walls are sharp-edged and rudimentary, the floor pockmarked, strewn with debris. Small pebbles roll and slip beneath Tracer’s feet, conspiring to send her flying; she can’t imagine how tricky it must be to navigate this uneven ground with just the one leg, though Junkrat seems to be doing a decent job of staying upright. His prosthetic is loud in the confined space, clacking each time he lowers it to the ground.

The only light comes from her chronal accelerator; a soft, sea-blue glow.

“Hold up.” He puts out an arm, stopping just shy of physical contact. She turns; he’s stooped low, though there’s still plenty of room above him. Something about his posture suggests an abnormality of the spine. “Look, the tunnel diverges here. There’s another path leading in from town. This is where your Talon mates nearly got the jump on us. Perfect place to stick a remote mine, just in case they get any ideas about nipping back down here.”

She peers into the darkness. He’s right; a second passageway emerges out of the gloom, a steep diagonal leading back up. “I don’t have any remote mines.”

“All right. A trap, then. Right here, where it’s darkest. They’d never see it.”

“Don’t have any of those either.”

“What _do_ you have?”

She pats her holster. “Guns,” she says. “And my razor-sharp wit.” She decides not to mention her  pulse bombs. No doubt he’d get ideas.

He tuts. “Should’ve let me bring some kit. I’d have rigged something up in no time.”

“Not on your life.” She’s only half serious. The idea that Talon might ambush them down here, in the dark, is sending her nerves haywire. Every tiny sound stops her heart for half a second. She’s fast, but that’s no good if you don’t know where to run. And frankly, booby-trapping the adjacent tunnel doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, though that might just be paranoia speaking. “How can you even tell where we’re going, anyway? It all looks the same down here.”

“Good thing I left a gingerbread trail last time then, eh?” He points ahead, down at the floor. Dimly lit in the cool glow of the accelerator, just visible beneath the thin layer of scree, is a series of shallow scrapes in the surface of the rock. They lead like an interminable ellipsis on into the depths of the tunnel. “The old peg’s good for something,” Junkrat says, smiling; his pride is unmistakeable, like a schoolkid with a gold star. For a brief, startling moment, Tracer almost finds herself smiling back.

She shuts it down. “Come on, then,” she says. “This cave’s not going to find itself.”

*

It turns out that the cave more or less does find itself. They get lost five minutes later, when Junkrat’s trail is abruptly erased by a large, jagged scorchmark right at the centre of another junction. Beyond that, a carpet of fresh debris obscures the floor for what looks like miles around.

“This,” Tracer says, pointing at the damage, “is exactly why we didn’t let you bring any bombs.”

It’s only Junkrat’s insistence that they are mere minutes away from the cave that convinces Tracer not to turn back. They follow the smell of cordite, the scorchmarks streaking out along the wall like long black fingers. They navigate the tunnel in careful silence; the crunch and grind of feet against rubble is surely enough to alert whoever resides in the cave – assuming they’re still there – but it seems proper to approach silently, like hunters stalking a skittish animal. Down here the ceiling is lower; when Tracer glances back at Junkrat she notices that despite his hunched posture, the tips of his hair are brushing against the stone. It’s enough to make her feel faintly claustrophobic, though she must be at least a foot shorter than him.

She’s about to call time on the whole venture when the increasingly narrow walls finally give way to a wide, smooth-walled cavern. The ceiling is smooth and unblemished, rising gently in a shallow arch. The floor appears to have been recently swept. A row of unlit pillar candles sit adjacent to a sparse but beautifully woven rug; rich, arterial red tempered with muted gold, culminating in a strange but somehow familiar symbol: three small hexagons atop what appears to be a distorted, triangular eye. Her mind is cast back to King’s Row, to flowing white robes and the quiet elation of the crowd; the soothing cadence of a synthesised voice. Excitement inside of her like electricity, bright hope for a better future. A _kinder_ future.

And then she realises what she’s looking at.

“Junkrat,” she whispers. “It’s not just some bloke they were after. I think they’re hunting down Shambali.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wasn't expecting such a positive response when i first posted this - self-indulgent as it is - so thank you for the kind comments! it's really cool & exciting to see people enjoying a thing i wrote. And I hope very much that you enjoyed this chapter.
> 
> thanks again to em for being a constant soundboard off which i bounce nutty ideas, and for writing mega cool OVW fic (if you're not reading [Memoization](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8104603) then you should be tbh. She writes very good.)


	3. Chapter 3

The hushed significance of Tracer’s revelation is marred somewhat by the look of complete incomprehension on Junkrat’s face.

“What the fuck’s a Shambali?” he asks.

She casts him a sideways glance. “Have you been living under a rock for the last few years?”

“Some of the time,” he replies, quite sincerely. “There’s parts of Australia you can go for miles without seeing so much as a shack.” He pronounces it ‘Straya’, like it’s a different country entirely. “Much easier to find something decent down by the coast. That’s where all the rich bastards live, and they can afford water purifiers and that. Fancy stuff, y’know? They don’t even realise how good they got it. Back in Junkertown, if you had a roof that kept the rain out you’d be everyone’s best mate.”

“That’s…not what I meant.”

“Hey, there’s no food or anything here,” Junkrat says. He points to the pillar candles, arranged artfully along the far wall – tallest tapering down to shortest, a little lopsided where the wax has melted, attaining a new form over time. It’s a true hermit’s cave, the sparsest of living spaces. “Not even water. These Shambalis, don’t they eat or anything?”

“Well, they don’t…” A sudden noise emanates from behind them, up in the tunnels. The brittle clatter of disturbed pebbles. They are not alone. She presses her earpiece but there’s only static. They’re too deep beneath the ground. Of  _ course  _ the stupid fucking thing doesn’t work down here, where they need it most. “Shit. Junkrat-”

“I’m sure I’ve seen this before somewhere.” He’s crouched next to the prayer mat, poking and lifting it with grubby fingers, and Tracer is sure that counts for some kind of terrible sacrilege but now is not the time to scold him for it. “Ahh, I can’t bloody remember. Roadie’d know if he was here. He’s a right know-it-all, him. Way smarter than he looks. You lot shouldn’t be so scared of him…”

The slow percussion of boots echo off the rock. “ _ Junkrat _ -“

“…’course, he’s liable to be pissed off at you for the tranquiliser business but you can hardly blame him for that, can you? I mean…”

“Junkrat, will you shut your face for one bloody minute!”

He pauses mid-sentence, mouth poised to shape another long, drawling Australian vowel. If he’s offended, it doesn’t show. She presses a demonstrative finger against her lips, cups a hand to her ear to show that he ought to listen. For a long moment he gazes at her with placid, almost bovine confusion and her heart sinks; of all the possibilities Tracer had entertained, playing an extended game of charades in a dark cave with the enemy breathing down her neck had not been among them.

And then finally, blessedly, he understands.

“Oh!” He whispers it, thank Christ. “Sorry. Tinnitus. All those bombs’ve screwed up my ears a bit. Makes everything sound, y’know-“ he gestures vaguely to the side of his head. “All right. Let’s get going.” His prosthetic creaks as he stands; he wavers for a second, but rights himself quickly. He must be used to it. “This way.”

There’s another, smaller exit at the back of the cave, almost lost entirely in the shadows. The thought of traversing it makes her throat dry; visions of dead ends and cave-ins fill her with dread, though she can’t see that they have much choice. Her heels dig into the rock, resistant. “You’ve been down here before, right?”

He gives a dry little cackle. “What, you think Roadie’d fit down here? No chance. Nah, this is plan B. Come on, quick, they’ll be here any minute.” He nudges her with the heel of his palm. The joints of his right hand are spotted with rust; his metallic fingers are hard against her shoulder, though he’s pushing her gently. “Don’t have to go far. Just out of sight. They won’t want to come this way. Can you turn off your glowing thingy?”

“No,” she manages to mumble, as he shepherds her down the tunnel, into the blackness; the crystalline blue of the accelerator plays off the cracks in the rock, rendering this resolutely terrestrial place the dark and nightmarish hue of an oceanic abyss. Behind them, the thunder of footsteps grows unbearably loud; the sharp back-and-forth of barked commands suggests their visitors have arrived. Suddenly, she’s certain that the glow is going to give the game away, that they’ll spot them a mile off. She’s armed, yes, but she’s only one person, and they are outnumbered. They are trapped, and Mercy has no idea that anything is amiss.

_ It’s okay _ , she tells herself.  _ You’ve handled worse. _

“Oi.” He crouches in front of her, a long and slender shadow. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

She exhales, a little shaky from the adrenaline. Her limbs are screaming out to run, to move, but she forces herself to hunker down, pressing her back against the uneven rock; she has to be patient.  She can’t see Junkrat’s face, but she knows he’s staring at her. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah? Only you’re breathing kind of strange. Panicky, you know? It’s all right, I won’t laugh at you. People’re scared of all sorts of weird stuff.”

“Sod  _ off _ , Junkrat. And shut up. They’ll hear us.”

He shuts up. The silence is filled, briefly, by the quiet hiss of their breathing, the soft scuff of his feet against the floor as he shifts position. And then the rusted-hinge creak of his fingers as he extends his hand, patting her softly and awkwardly on the top of the head. “S’okay,” he whispers. She almost splutters with the indignity of it but holds her tongue. It’s possible, she thinks grudgingly, that he’s actually trying to be nice.

Fragmented echoes of conversation drift in from the cave, an incomplete jigsaw of an argument:

“…wouldn’t be here. He must’ve caught wind of us and…”

“…can’t have gone far, we’d have heard…”

“…fucking tell with omnics, they’re not…”

Junkrat’s head turns sharply at that. Even in this artificial twilight she can see the sudden widening of his eyes, keen and curious. The craning of his long heron’s neck. “What’s that about a bot…?”

“Can you hear what they’re saying?” Tracer whispers.

“Nah,” he replies. The frustration of this is evident in his tone. “Not properly. Ears ringing. Here, you try.” He flattens his back against the wall, draws his knees up to his chest. There’s barely any room but she stands, lifting her feet with slow, exaggerated motion; there are a few seconds in which Tracer is certain she’s going to trip over his foot and they’ll both end up in an untidy, conspicuous sprawl. Her arms are crossed over the accelerator, minimising the glow. In the dark he is all sharp angles and long lines, bright, watchful eyes; a hunched and wary animal.

The adrenaline is still hot in her veins. Some distant part of her recognises a thin and insistent seam of aggression running just below the surface. There’s danger in that; she’s never liked to think too hard about her fierce streak. That dogged determination that sprang with teeth and claw from the ashes of her ambitions. She swallows it down, forces it into silence. It will only lead her into trouble.

“He’s had a two day head-start.” The voice floats in, disembodied; it sounds close by. “He’s long gone, I’m telling you. I doubt he’s stupid enough to have stayed here, and he’s sure as hell not got the backup to take anyone on.”

“I don’t know, man.” A second voice, further away. “Shambali have influence.”

There’s a snort of derisive laughter. “The day I let myself be afraid of a bunch of fucking robot monks is the day I hand in my gun forever.”

The quiet, tinny clatter of Junkrat’s metal fingers against the rock suggests impatience, or perhaps fear. Tracer is willing to bet on the former; he strikes her as a person to whom the phrase ‘poor impulse control’ has been applied more than once. And she can’t judge him too harshly for that; she’s had the same accusation levelled at her enough times.

She holds up a single finger:  _ wait just a minute _ .

“Let’s get a team on every exit,” the first voice commands. “If he is still here, he’s probably going to make a run for it. If we can intercept him…”

Tracer doesn’t hear the rest. The adrenaline coalesces, becomes a sharp and jagged thing at the centre of her; she turns to Junkrat, wide-eyed, and she can see just enough of Junkrat’s face to make out his furrowed brow as he strains to understand.

“Mercy,” she says, a little breathless. “She’s in danger.”

“Sure, yeah. So are we, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“No, you don’t get it.” Her voice is rising in volume, and she barely cares to control it. “The communicator isn’t working. Mercy doesn’t have a clue what’s happening, and they’re sending teams out to cover the exits. She’s going to be ambushed and I can’t warn her. We’ve got to do something.”

“She’s armed, ain’t she?”

“Yeah, but…” She shakes her head. Fights off the urge to pace up and down, expend this glut of nervous energy. “I’m not saying she can’t look after herself, Junkrat, but she’s alone, and she’s trusting me to keep her informed. And because our stupid fucking tech is an outdated pile of  _ shit _ I can’t even fucking do that. So we have to help.”

Slowly, he gets to his feet. In the dark he sounds like an ancient automaton, clanking and creaking in sudden deployment. In the narrow space there is perhaps a hand’s breadth of space between them; the burnt-out car engine smell of him is almost reassuring, if only as proof that she is not alone. “Relax,” he says. His teeth flash in the dark, a bone-yellow grin. “You trust me, right?”

She grimaces. “About as far as I can throw you.”

“Good enough for me.” He takes a couple of steps back, allowing her the luxury of leg room. She realises she has unwittingly taken point. “When I count to three, you make a break for it, all right? Run as fast as you can. You remember the way back?”

“I…” She’s not certain she does, but his mind seems to run at a hundred miles an hour, and a half-second is all she gets. He motions frantically with his hands, wordlessly corralling her to the very edge of the tunnel. From this new vantage point she can just about make out their would-be assailants: black-clad smudges stalking the perimeter of the cave. Her hands travel automatically to her holsters, fingers poised and ready to draw. She can take them. She knows she can.

“Ready?” he asks.

She glances over her shoulder. He’s got both arms braced against the walls like he’s about to scale them, a giant and ungainly spider scrabbling upwards. She’s struggling to believe he has a plan at all. “What’re you going to do?”

His mouth is a sharp, vulpine arc. “You just run when I say go, all right? Trust me. This is my area of expertise.”

“I thought that was blowing things up?”

“Three,” he says. “Run.”

 

 *  


 

Motion comes naturally to Tracer, moreso in the wake of her accident. Manipulating time is an intoxicating experience, a physical sensation unlike anything Tracer has ever felt before. There is no comparable euphoria: the fastest sprint, the best fuck, the biggest victory; nothing else comes close.

One minute she  _ is _ , and then she  _ isn’t _ . She is Schrodinger’s woman, blinking in and out of existence with such arrogant speed that surely the universe itself must question the reality of her. It had been alienating, for a time, being such a unique metaphysical anomaly: Lena Oxton, no longer truly a person but a big red question mark on a physicist’s chart. She might never have come to terms with it at all had it not been for Overwatch: Winston’s brains and Mercy’s heart, Reinhardt’s courage, better than any family she might have hoped for. And Amelie…

That thought brings her sharply back to herself.

A cacophony of voices ring in her ears; no gunfire, not in this confined and confused space. They must think her some kind of phantom, because the prevailing atmosphere is of panic. The two men are rooted to the spot; one of them flails wildly with the butt of his rifle, chasing her afterimage, and a giggle escapes her lips. The exit is before her, the stretch of tunnel leading towards Mercy’s rescue, and she’s about to head for it when she realises she has no idea where Junkrat is.

_ Forget him _ , she tells herself, and knows she won’t; he’s not one of them, but in this moment he is an ally, and she won’t have his death on her conscience. She blinks back to the centre of the room, craning her neck to catch a split-second glimpse of their hiding spot. It’s empty. Junkrat is not there. Has he used this sudden chaos to make his escape? She blinks sideways; her feet leave the ground only to meet it again several metres to the left, a temporal whiplash which leaves her deliciously giddy. There’s no time to worry about him. This was his brilliant plan, anyway.

The thought has barely solidified when a peal of delighted laughter rings out, high and clear above the panicked shouting and thunder of boots. He dives in, a flash of flaming hair and soot-streaked skin, landing without grace on his hands and one knee. One hand slams against the stone floor, depositing something at the feet of a frozen and terrified Talon agent. It blips once, twice; uncoordinated limbs scrabble for purchase, pulling him upright, propelling him towards her. “Go!” he yells, and in the second it takes her to realise what he’s done his hands are between her shoulder blades, shoving her forward; she stumbles, pitches forward, blinks out just before her palms hit the rock.

The pulse bomb explodes.

She rights herself just before she lands, coming to a screeching halt a few metres down the tunnel. A plume of black smoke and dust barrels towards her. She shields her eyes with her arm. The sound of falling rock is briefly deafening, a bass-heavy drum solo which ends abruptly and without ceremony in a hushed whisper of dispersing dust. And then there is silence.

Tracer unfolds from her crouch, brushing rock dust from her face, her jacket. Her nose is thick with the stuff; it smells like abandoned houses and wet, empty brickyards. There is no sound emanating from the cave. She’s not sure if the cave-in is total, or if the rubble piled high at the tunnel mouth is  just a temporary obstacle.

From a few yards to the left comes a pitiful groan.

“Junkrat?” She angles her body so that the accelerator’s light illuminates the far end of the tunnel. There’s something down there, stretched out on the ground. Long limbs splayed awkwardly. The faint flicker of dust-doused embers. She approaches slowly, tentatively. “You dead?”

“Nope.” Arms retract, slowly, as though testing for breaks. There’s a brief chorus of wincing as he draws himself up, propping himself a little limp against the wall. His hair gutters, a dull scarlet beneath all that powder. “You know what they say. Cat’s got nine lives, but a rat’s got double.”

“Nobody says that.”

“Don’t they?” A thin runnel of blood trickles down his upper lip. He smears it with the back of a grubby hand, streaking crimson halfway up his face. “Well, maybe they should.”

From this distance she can see the extent of the damage he’s done to himself. To her admittedly untrained eye he looks mostly intact, though there’s a slight glaze to his eyes which might suggest a minor concussion. Then again, it might be normal for him. “You nicked my bomb, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he says, and she can’t help but admire his brazenness a little. “Didn’t plan to, honest. But desperate times and all that.”

She supposes she should be pissed off with him. And maybe, once they’re out of these stupid tunnels and back out in the sunshine, she might re-assess the situation; perhaps she’ll find the righteous indignation at having her property snatched from under her nose. Right now, though, she’s just glad to have a physical barrier standing between them and Talon. It should buy them a little more time to get back to Mercy.

And besides. As idiot stunts go, it  _ was _ kind of cool.

In this temporary quiet, she can hear the scrabbling of hands against rock, muffled conversation emanating from the gaps in the rubble. “We need to move,” she says. “They’ll be through any minute.”

“Small problem with that, love.” Junkrat shifts, stretching out his legs, and indicates the shattered nub of his prosthetic with a half-hearted flourish:  _ ta-da.  _ “Might’ve landed a bit funny. I thought I’d made this one a bit sturdier. Guess I miscalculated.”

“Shit.” She briefly considers the logistics of carrying him, but he’s taller than the tunnel is wide, and he’s probably heavier than he looks. No, that’s surely a shortcut to a hernia. Could she drag him fast enough? Would he even let her? “Bugger it. Can’t you hop or something?”

He arches an alarmingly bushy eyebrow. “Oh sure. Might take an hour or two but no worries! Not like we’re being chased or anything.”

“Okay, okay, don’t get snippy. I wasn’t the one who blew your bloody leg off.”

“I wonder,” a soft voice interjects, from the darkness behind them, “if I might be of assistance?”

Tracer spins on her heel, pistols drawn, a lightning bolt of motion. The twin muzzles find aim at the apex of a smooth titanium skull; a cluster of pale blue lights glow gently, set into the slope of the omnic’s forehead like jewels. The mark of a Shambali monk.

The omnic calmly raises their hands. “I see I’ve startled you,” they say –  _ he, _ Tracer corrects herself, because the Shambali identify loosely as a brotherhood. “Forgive me. I sometimes forget how quietly I move.”

Tracer glances down. The omnic’s legs are neatly tucked beneath him in a tidy lotus; she’s not sure exactly how he manages to subvert gravity, but he floats gently, suspended in midair the way a boat sits on the water. His shoulders are slowly circled by a halo of silver orbs, spinning around him like small planets around a calm sun. “It’s you they’re looking for, isn’t it?” she asks.

“Don’t bloody  _ talk _ to it!” Junkrat protests. The omnic must have startled him too, because he’s tucked almost into a ball, knees protectively drawn against his chest. The truncated remains of his prosthetic dangle sadly in midair, splintered like an old chair leg. He stares with undisguised suspicion up at the floating omnic. “Knew I should’ve saved that bomb…”

“It’s okay,” Tracer says. “He’s the Shambali I was telling you about.”

“My name is Zenyatta,” the omnic offers, quite pleasantly.

“What?” Junkrat’s face darkens; alarm gives way to disgust, lips pulling back from teeth in a snarl. “You never said it was a fucking  _ bot _ they were after.”

“I didn’t think it was relevant!” She’s encountered this before: London is rife with anti-omnic sentiment, and there Tracer is regarded as something of a curiosity. Somewhere in the depths of her conscience there’s a nugget of understanding, a realisation that the hatred is borne of fear, and of ignorance; Tracer is too young to remember the worst of the omnic crisis, except as a handful of fragmented memories, and those had been gleaned from the news. The crisis had never truly intruded upon the sanctity of her childhood home. She hadn’t realised the extent of it until she’d moved to London as a teenager; the buildings had been pockmarked with indelible scars, great blackened pits carved into the roads and pavements. Windows still crudely boarded and vacant within, the residents long since fled or perhaps already pushing up daisies. It’s not that Tracer doesn’t harbour some small understanding. It’s just that she believes so strongly that the future can be a better place, for man  _ and _ machine, and it infuriates her that people like Junkrat aren’t even willing to  _ try _ .

“I see you are having difficulty mobilising,” Zenyatta says. His facial features are even and permanently neutral; the lack of eye contact makes it nearly impossible to tell at a glance who he’s talking to. “I am stronger than I appear. I could perhaps support you…”

“No,” Junkrat says. “No. No, I’m not letting that scrapheap anywhere near me. Tell it to piss off.”

“It’s either that or you hop out of here,” Tracer says. “Stop being such a baby. He’s not going to eat you.”

“You never know with bots,” Junkrat says darkly. Whatever else Tracer might think about his attitude, it’s clear that his discomfort is genuine. Whenever Zenyatta moves, he flinches; she’s not sure if he’s reaching for a weapon that isn’t there, or preparing for a blow that will never come. “Can’t trust them, not a bit.”

Zenyatta appears unperturbed by Junkrat’s vitriol. “My pursuers will be upon us shortly,” he says. “I sense they have already begun to breach the barrier. I must insist on helping you as you have helped me.” He extends a hand. Everything about him speaks of a natural placidity; he moves like a summer tide, the gentle lapping of silvery waves, and yet as he reaches out Tracer can almost sense the tension of Junkrat’s every muscle; it’s as though he has marked the omnic not just as ‘contemptible’, but as ‘threatening’.

The sound of voices grows louder, escaping through newly-formed gaps in the rubble. Tracer glances back at the cave, then down at Junkrat, still stubbornly curled up against the wall. “He’s right,” she says. “We have to go  _ now _ . Please, Junkrat. Let him help you. I don’t want to have to leave you behind, but I will.”

“Go on, then,” he says, pulling himself up into a wobbly crouch. His metal hand braces against the wall, keeping him upright. “You piss off as well. Rather take my chances with that lot, thanks very much.”

“For fuck’s sake.” Tracer’s usual method of dealing with stress is to laugh at it, or to run from it. Neither is really applicable here. “I knew you were going to be a pain in the arse as soon as I clapped eyes on you, but I didn’t think you were  _ stupid _ .”

That must spark something in Junkrat because he opens his mouth almost immediately to retort. He doesn’t get as far as making a sound; something very fast and very hard collides suddenly with the side of his skull. The sound is almost hollow, the echoing  _ crack _ of a cricket ball against a wooden bat. He crumples heavily to the floor, limp-limbed, a sooty and abandoned marionette. Tracer’s heart leaps; she raises her pistols, convinced they must have broken through already, that someone has shot and killed Junkrat and must surely be coming for her.

“I must apologise,” Zenyatta says. The projectile slips smoothly back into its orbit, rotating with the rest of its kin. He slips past Tracer, gathering up the now unconscious Junkrat with deft motion; Zenyatta rearranges the untidy tangle of limbs into a neat and perfect fireman’s carry.

“Aren’t you lot pacifists?” Tracer asks.

“I judged that the harm caused by a minor concussion would ultimately be forgivable compared to the harm he would come to had I left him behind.” Zenyatta pauses, almost a little awkwardly. “I believe very much in the relativity of all things.”

“Right, yeah.” Dangling over Zenyatta’s shoulder Junkrat suddenly looks almost insubstantial, like he must weigh nothing at all. Like he’s something interesting they’ve found lying in the gutter. “Well, I believe very much that we should be getting the hell away from this place. After you, Mr. Zenyatta. They’ll be coming from behind us, and god knows I’m not a pacifist.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for reading, commenting, kudos-ing, it makes this weird fictional journey so much more enjoyable and I am incredibly grateful. Specialest thanks as always to Em, who is constantly supportive & delightful and reassured me that this chapter was not crap. And whose marvellous fic [Memoization](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8104603) is now complete and totally worth your time, especially if you are as fond of Mercy & McCree as I am.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter was an action-y chapter. Now here's a talk-y chapter, with a healthy dose of bickering to boot. I hope you enjoy it.

The Watchpoint is abuzz with a fresh energy when they return, although they could scarcely be said to have scored a victory. Still, when they exit the plane – Tracer, tired and dirt-caked, trailing a disgruntled and headsore Junkrat behind her like a scolded child – Winston and a fully ambulatory McCree are on hand to welcome them back, like heroes returned from the war. They do this every time, no matter how trivial the mission, because behind the good cheer forever lurks the possibility that someday, one of them may not make it back.

“You,” Mercy says, indicating Junkrat. She is every inch the stern physician; years of dealing with stubborn, wounded idiots have made it her default approach. Tracer would know. She is frequently the stubborn, wounded idiot to whom Mercy must attend. “With me, please.”

He glares at her. His eyes are noticeably wonky; he leans lopsided, exerting a heavy pressure on the makeshift crutch they’d scrounged from the plane’s small medical bay. He’d been too sore and too woozy to do much talking on the flight back, let alone pitch a fit over Zenyatta’s presence. Thank goodness for post-concussion headaches, Tracer thinks, a little guiltily.

“What?” Junkrat protests. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Mercy’s lips crease almost imperceptibly upwards, a small, wry smile. “Whatever else you may or may not have done, it’s abundantly clear to me that you have sustained a head injury. And I would not be a very good doctor if I didn’t attend to it. So please, if you would…”

He goes, albeit grudgingly. And then Tracer turns to Winston, whose fond, paternal smile never fails to remind her that this place, here, is the best and truest home she’s ever had.

“I suppose we should debrief,” he says.

“I suppose we should,” she agrees.

*

She tells them about the network of tunnels, about the scorch marks on the walls and the Talon operatives stalking through the dark. She glosses over the bit where Junkrat stole her bomb, though she does give an abridged account of his contribution. It seems the courteous thing to do. When she’s done with the story, McCree leans back in his chair, running the backs of his knuckles slowly against the thick whiskers coating his chin.

“What the hell would they want with a Shambali?” he asks. “They already took out their leader, didn’t they? Pretty sure they’ve done all the damage they need to.”

Tracer shrugs. “I asked Zenyatta as much. He doesn’t really know either. He reckons they’ve been chasing him for months, though. You’ve got to give it to Talon, I guess. At least they’re consistently infuriating.”

“So we’re no closer to knowing what they want.” McCree gets up from his seat, gives a noncommittal grunt. Tracer’s corresponding look of dismay must be horribly obvious, because he quickly backtracks: “But uh, good job all the same, Lena. You did good, holding them off the way you did.”

“I was bricking it, honestly. I really thought they’d catch Mercy off guard.” She slumps in her seat. Suddenly she’s bone-tired; every last drop of adrenaline has drained from her system, and there is barely enough energy left over to keep her upright. Despite her unwashed state, the prospect of crawling into her bunk and cocooning herself in blankets has never seemed quite so appealing. “I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t alone.”

McCree quirks a smile at that, his dark eyes alive with mischief. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, pausing for a moment at the door. “Firecracker like you? I’d say you’re a force to be reckoned with, backup or no backup.”

An embarrassed flush creeps up her neck, colouring her cheeks. She can handle the merciless ribbing he likes to dish out, but his compliments are rarer. She hates that little part of herself that clamours for McCree’s approval: that starstruck teenage girl for whom the tall, dark and handsome cowboy is almost a rockstar, a legend. It’s true that just about everyone is a little bit in love with McCree, and although Tracer’s tastes tend to skew towards the feminine, there’s always been room in her heart for a handful of completely inappropriate men.

“I’m sorry about the communicator,” Winston says, when McCree is gone.

Tracer’s heart aches for him. He looks so genuinely remorseful, as though the entire escapade had been his fault from the start. Sometimes, Winston is so consumed by the notion that his self-worth as a being – an _experimental_ being, who perhaps ought not to _be_ at all – is based solely in what he is able to contribute. He builds, he invents, he creates, and she can see in the fall of his face that he equates the failure of the communicator to a failure as a sentient being. When he’s like this, it’s because he’s forgotten how much people look to him. How much they love him.

“It’s not your fault,” she says. “You can’t magic up money, Winston, no matter how smart you are. And besides…” she spreads her arms wide, flashes him her most winning smile. “Look, I’m in one piece, aren’t I? Nobody got hurt. Well, none of _us_ got hurt.”

Winston’s sorrowful expression does not relent. “I suppose that’s true,” he says.

“You’re doing your best,” Tracer says. “It’s just that there’s so few of us, and we only have so many skills to offer. And we can’t exactly go out with our hats in our hands because they’ll chuck us in bloody prison. You can’t make yourself accountable for that, Winston.”

“I believe we can do significant good here,” Winston says. “Truly, I do. And I believe one day, the world will welcome us again. But they’re just not ready to accept us yet, and…” he looks around. Despite his broad stature and heavy features he moves with great care; he is capable of such incredible destruction and yet he is so very gentle, so softly spoken. “Everyone is so tired,” he says, shoulders sinking in defeat. “Look at you. Even you’re tired. I fear we might all drop dead from exhaustion before we achieve anything meaningful.”

Tracer wants to tell him that he is the glue that holds everything together. That he _is_ Overwatch now, in so many ways. More than that: he is her family, he and Mercy and Reinhardt, Genji and yes, even McCree, her beloved surrogate aunts and uncles, because a familial bond does not require shared blood. Not in Tracer’s eyes.

She leans over. Wraps her slender arms around his thick neck. She sinks into his thick black fuzz; it’s like hugging a carpet. His great hands are like warm velvet, tentative against her arm. After all these years, he still acts like he might break her with nothing more than a fond pat. “I’m behind you all the way, big guy,” she says. “Don’t give up. There’s still plenty of fight in all of us yet.”

*

A little later, after a blissfully hot shower, she finds Mercy eating alone in the dining hall, hungrily wolfing down a huge portion of reheated stew. Tracer makes herself a cheese sandwich; the bread is on the turn, and the cheese is rock-hard, but to her famished stomach it might as well be a feast. They eat in companionable silence for a time, each respecting the other’s need to refuel interrupted. The silence is only broken when Tracer offers to make a cup of tea.

“Coffee,” Mercy says, wiping gravy from her chin with a paper napkin. There is nothing prim or dainty about her when she’s hungry. “Please.”

“Normal coffee or rocket fuel?”

Mercy rests her chin on her hands, gazing with tired eyes up at Tracer. “Rocket fuel,” she says. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to bed early today. I have reading to catch up on, and I intend to have a long, hot bath, and those are just _two_ of my plans. In fact, please give me extra sugar. I want to see it out to midnight at the very least.”

“Reading, huh?” Tracer reaches up into the cabinet, struggling for the top shelf. Reinhardt keeps his strong coffee hidden at the very back, largely so that Torbj _ö_ rn won’t drink it all. She has to clamber up onto the counter to retrieve it. He won’t mind; Reinhardt has always let her get away with murder. “Please don’t tell me you’re studying again. I’m starting to wonder if your brain ever switches off.”

“Studying? Oh goodness, no. No, I’m reading for fun this time. The _trashiest_ romance novel you’ve ever seen.” She grins; there’s a hint of sheepishness, but she’s clearly not apologetic. “Sometimes, the brain needs sugar as much as the body. And you?” Tracer feels Mercy’s clinical gaze like something cool against her skin; she’ll be taking in the dark shadows beneath Tracer’s eyes, the wild mess of her hair. “You look very tired. Perhaps an early night would be good for you.”

“I can hear my bed pining for me,” Tracer says, spooning sugar into the thick black murk of Mercy’s coffee. She brings the steaming mug over and places it next to Mercy, who smiles in gratitude. “It’d be cruel to deprive it. God, I don’t think I’d even mind if I did nothing but sleep for the next two days. No errands, no recon. Just uninterrupted rest.” Her own mug comes to rest on the coffee table; she sprawls out on the sofa, her long, coltish legs slung over the back. “Can you imagine, Mercy? Two days doing _nothing_?”

Mercy gets up from the dinner table. “Well, we’d have to hire another medic,” she says, insinuating herself onto the sofa so that Tracer’s head comes to rest on the pillow of her lap. “Seeing as the lot of you just can’t seem to help getting hurt. But it is a nice idea. Perhaps, if we were to recruit a few more people…” She does not expand upon this thought. They both know how unlikely an option this is; it’s not as though they are in a position to pay anyone for their services, and who is queueing up to join them these days?

“Stranger things have happened,” Tracer says, because someone has to be the optimist.

Mercy smiles. Ruffles Tracer’s hair, ever the affectionate big sister. Then she plucks a book from the pocket of her cardigan. It’s an ancient, dog-eared thing, clearly very well-thumbed; if she strains her head, Tracer can just about make out the cover. Mills and Boon, practically an antique; there’s a leggy blonde being ravished – albeit in hilariously chaste fashion – by a dark, handsome man in a Stetson.

“Oh,” Tracer says. She waggles her eyebrows suggestively. “Oh, I _see_.”

The results are instantaneous. A bright flush colours Mercy’s face a livid pink. “Hush now,” she says, though she’s still smiling. “The grown-ups need quiet time.”

“Does he know that you…”

“Lena,” Mercy says. Sweet, but sharp, like hard candy fashioned into a shiv. “Lena, darling. Look at how peaceful we are, right now. How rarely we get to share moments like this. Let’s not ruin everything by talking about silly boys.”

She remembers Junkrat, then; the off-kilter alignment of his pupils and the groggy silence on the way home from Ilios. She opens her mouth to ask about him, but stops short. Mercy’s right. When was the last time they got to enjoy one another’s company like this? No, she’ll swing by the infirmary before she goes to bed, check on him herself. He’ll keep for a few more hours.

“Read me a story, aunty Angela,” Tracer says. “One about sexy cowboys.”

*

Tracer is dead on her feet by the time she drags herself to the infirmary. She doesn’t intend to stay for long; she dreams of a day in which she does not wind up tired, or dirty, or injured, and she figures that the sooner she’s in bed, the sooner that day might arrive. The truth is, it’s only guilt that brings her here in the first place; she may not have landed the concussive blow, but in Junkrat’s eyes she may as well have issued the order.

She expects him to be asleep, or at least resting, but when she enters the isolation room he’s sitting on the floor, tinkering with what appears to be a large pile of scrap. Alarm bells ring, but she quickly realises there’s nothing potentially explosive in among the junk spread out before him.

“Evening,” he says, not looking up. “Not brought your bot friend, have you?”

“His name is Zenyatta,” she says. “And no. He’s not with me. I think you made it quite clear to me that you’re not keen on having him around.”

“Usually best to avoid them who’d bash you in the head for shits and giggles.” He’s tightening a screw with an improbably tiny screwdriver he’s procured from god-knows-where; his tongue protrudes just a little from the corner of his mouth. “’Specially when they’re not even human.”

“Just because they’re not human doesn’t mean they’re not worthy of respect. They can think and feel, and you can’t just go round being a rude little shit about them just because they make you uncomfortable. Zenyatta only did what he did to keep you safe. It’s not his fault you were being a stubborn idiot.”

“You ever been to Australia?”

“No, and stop deflecting.”

“What do you _know_ about Australia, then?” There’s something different in his tone now; something low and warning, like his seemingly perpetual store of good humour has suddenly run bone dry. He still hasn’t looked up at her, and there’s something a little unnerving about that too. He pushes a silver washer around the floor with a long thin forefinger, tracing out arcane patterns. “S’okay, take your time. I’m not going anywhere. Heh.”

There’s a sharp retort on the tip of her tongue, but she bites it back; she realises, now she’s been put on the spot, that she doesn’t actually know much about Australia at all. Not beyond the obvious, anyway: that the country had been brought to the very brink of annihilation during the Omnic Crisis, and that the Omnium had been irreparably destroyed in the aftermath. The truth is she has never made it her business to know any more than that. To Tracer – too young to recall the meat and bones of the Crisis - the business in Australia is done, concluded; sufficiently far away and out of date to be of little interest. It has barely occurred to her at all that the actual residents might disagree with her assessment.

“There was a war,” Tracer says, and falters, feeling suddenly inadequate. “And um. And there was an explosion.” At least, she thinks, standing tall despite her embarrassment, at least she has the decency to feel ashamed of her ignorance. He wears his like a shield.

Junkrat gives a small, almost bitter laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “There sure was an explosion.”

There’s a long silence. To Tracer, every second of it is excruciating; there is no appropriate moment to make an exit, not unless she wants to look like she’s running away, admitting defeat. She stands awkwardly in the doorway, struggling to find a way to save face; to ask some kind of insightful question, or make an erudite statement, but all she has is burning curiosity; what must it be like in Australia now? That a man like Junkrat could emerge from all that radio silence; loud and corrosive, a dichotomy of cheerful humour and seething omnist anger; that he might suddenly have insinuated himself at the forefront of Tracer’s consciousness and she, a bright and worldly young woman, might know nothing at all about the faraway country from which he came?

No, she thinks. She refuses to feel guilty about it. The world has moved on since the Crisis, and god knows Australia should be no different.

“My head’s fine, by the way,” Junkrat says. “Ta for asking.”

“I _was_ going to ask.” Tracer feels relieved and irate in equal measures. “That’s the whole reason I came to see you in the first flipping place.”

Finally, he puts down whatever it is he’s working on and looks up at her. He looks terrible. Well, worse than usual; his eyes are red raw with exhaustion, his face sallow beneath the grime. He flips her a thumbs-up. “Cheers for not telling them about the bomb. I mean, I wouldn’t have nicked it at all if you’d let me have my kit, but…” He gestures to the scrap pile. “Wish I’d never bothered, to be honest. Leg’s completely fucked and I ain’t got a proper workshop to fix it in. Have to make do with what I’ve got, and that ain’t much.”

Tracer realises that what she took for a scattering of meaningless spare parts is, in fact, the accumulated components of his deconstructed leg. She’s almost too shy to examine the exposed stub of his missing leg. Devoid of its prosthetic she realises just how much of the leg is actually absent; he’s been left only with three-quarters of a thigh, and no knee to speak of. The flesh there has long since healed, but it’s gnarled and uneven, suggesting a less than professional amputation. The skin there is red raw; he must have worn his prosthetic for far too long without taking proper care of it.

“Did you make that leg yourself?”

He grins. “Oh, sure. Not the fanciest design, but you work with what you can scavenge. Made this myself too.” He gives her a demure little wave with his metal fingers; the movement is near-perfect, marred by the barest of stutters. “Repurposed it off a bot. Figured I’d make better use of it.” There’s a wicked glint in his eyes, but she knows better than to react. “It’s a much better bit of kit than the leg, if I’m honest. All properly wired and everything. Fixed it up so it does what my brain tells it to.” He flexes the fingers. They creak a little under the strain. “Might be stupid, but I ain’t useless.”

She’s not sure what to say. That he made the crude peg-leg himself isn’t much of a surprise, but the hand? Converting a synthetic neural interface to biomechanical can’t be a simple task. “That’s kind of amazing.”

“Ah, cheers.” As she watches, he flicks a catch on the underside of the gauntlet. The cuff clicks open, expands, releasing its grip; gingerly, he slides the stub of his forearm up and out, laying the hand to rest on the floor. The stump is wrapped in grubby yellow-grey bandages. She doesn’t even want to guess what the skin must look like underneath. What it must _smell_ like. “You think this is something, you should see the rest of my kit. Made it all myself – bombs, frag launcher, traps, the lot. Could even fix up those bombs of yours, if you wanted. Make them really special.”

“Don’t push your luck,” she says.

 “Can’t blame me for trying.” He stifles a yawn with the back of his hand. His knuckles are smeared with grease. “Anyway. Seem to remember you’re in debt to me. You owe me a question.”

“Piss off. What for?”

“And I thought I had a short memory.” He taps his skull with his index finger. She swears she can hear something rattle inside. “I told you what was in that cave, remember? And that made us even Steven. But then I went one better and _showed_ you where to go. That’s a biggie, that. Put my mortal self on the line for your sake and everything, and you don’t get that for free.”

Tracer’s shoulders slump. She is too tired, _entirely_ too tired, to deal with this nutty bullshit. “What do you want?” she asks. The entire sentence emerges on a long, protracted sigh. Christ, why did she listen to her guilty conscience in the first place? He doesn’t _have_ to be her business any more.

“That glowy thing.” He indicates the space adjacent to his sternum, roughly where the accelerator sits on Tracer’s chest. “Your chronal whatsit. Makes you zip about, doesn’t it? Like you did in the caves? So what’s the story with that?”

“Nope.” She starts for the door, stops halfway; she turns, jabs an irritated finger at him. “Nope, sorry, but personal information is off limits. You don’t get to exchange amateur services for my life story, so don’t even bloody ask.” She realises her teeth are tightly clenched; releasing her jaw is like poking at a bruise. Suddenly, her temper is a frayed wire on the very verge of combustion. Where has all of her usual good cheer gone? Her optimism? No, there’s clearly some kind of personality clash here, an obvious incompatibility; she considers asking Mercy to reassign her in the morning until she remembers that she came in here completely of her own accord.

He’s nonchalant as he unpeels the bandages from his arm. “All right, no need to go berko. Didn’t realise it was _personal_. Just interested, y’know. Never seen tech like that before. Wondered what you're doing with it.”

She exhales. It’s this room, she thinks. This room, and the lack of air, the starkness of the striplight; the sweat-and-petrol smell of him, so anomalous in this clean, sterile space. Unpleasant memories of the weeks she’d spent in here after the accident – partially, anyway, because at that point in time her existence had only really been a technicality.

She had tolerated him better in Ilios. It’d been different, somehow. She had _felt_ different.

Tracer watches in rapt fascination as the bandages fall away, revealing what appear to be fairly recently-healed scars; a misshapen nub jutting from the bend of his elbow, churned flesh the livid pink of inflammation. The odour of unwashed skin intensifies, rising to a vaguely nauseating pitch. How can it not bother him? And doesn’t it _hurt_?

“All right,” she says. “Got a better deal for you. In exchange for Ilios, I’ll talk Winston into letting you use the workshop to fix up your leg. And as for this…” she presses her palm to the very centre of the accelerator; the accompanying thrum winds its way up through her ligaments, vibrating through the skin and bones of her like a surrogate heartbeat. “If you can behave civilly with Zenyatta for the next day…no, _two_ days, then I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Wait, what?” His eyes widen in sudden outrage. “We’re bartering information, ain’t we? Since when were favours part of the deal?”

She smiles, sweet, crossing her arms over the accelerator, like she’s deliberately blocking his view. Keeping him from seeing something important, though there’s nothing in there but sophisticated circuitry and a whole lot of science. “You want to know about this? I’m not giving that information away for cheap. It’s worth more than a return question. It’s a piece of me.  So if you want it, you earn it.”

Outrage turns to suspicion; those amber eyes narrow, and suddenly he is a feral thing assessing his situation, scanning her for threat potential. It’s funny, Tracer thinks; the minute he thinks he’s lost the upper hand he starts looking for the exit, as though all losing situations must inevitably end in violence. It’s interesting too, because aside from Zenyatta’s necessary intervention, not one of them has threatened him physically since he arrived here.

“Fine,” he says, a little sulky. The stub of his arm rests atop the bony shelf of his thigh, below which his femur tapers off into nothing. He displays a total lack of self-consciousness about his absent limbs. She thinks briefly of Jesse, whose missing arm does not cause him shame so much as a heightened awareness that others might exploit it as a weakness. More fool them. “I’ll think about it, anyway. Not saying I’m gonna _do_ it. But I’ll think about it.”

“Okay. You do that.” She looks beyond him, to the bed against the wall, which appears to have been lounged _on_ fairly recently – the creased sheets and healthy spattering of soot attests to this – but not slept _in_ , if the neat hospital corners are any indication. “You know, I’m sure Mercy has already said this, but…you really ought to get some sleep. You look like shit.”

He shrugs. “I slept twenty whole minutes on the plane home.”

“That’s called unconsciousness, and it doesn’t count. Seriously, Junkrat. Sleep is your friend.” _So is soap_ , she doesn’t add. That’s a battle to pick later on.

Junkrat picks up the knee segment of his prosthetic and mutters something under his breath; he turns the knee around and around, as though there’s something terribly interesting about its orbit, the way the rusted hinges catch the light.

“Pardon? I didn’t catch…”

He lowers the knee into his lap. “I _said_ , I ain’t in the habit of sleeping much when I’m on my own. Not in the outback and definitely not here. Ain’t got Roadie to watch my back, and begging your pardon, but I don’t trust none of you.” He looks up. The bags under his eyes are corpse-grey, but he doesn’t seem to lack for energy. She gets the impression he’s no stranger to running on empty.

“I doubt they’re going to let your mate babysit you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Me? Not getting at anything, love. I’d ask you straight up if I was after something. Anyway, speaking of, you don’t exactly look as fresh as a daisy yourself. Feels like I’m keeping you from your beauty sleep, don’t it?”

She can’t detect any malice in his tone. She can’t even detect annoyance, which doesn’t feel quite right. He just seems tired, and a little out of his comfort zone. There’s something of an unhappily caged animal about him. She doesn’t feel sorry for him exactly, but there’s a creeping sense of responsibility that he’s even in this room to begin with. In fact, the more she thinks about it, the more she realises she’s the only reason he’s even still _here_.

She clears her throat. “I could stay-”

“Nah.” He waves his stump as though there’s a dismissive hand at the end of it. “You said so yourself. Sleep is your friend. So go sleep. I promise I won’t drop dead in the night.” He grins at that. She can’t help but wonder why he thinks it’s funny. “Wouldn’t want to miss my chance to mess about in that workshop of yours. Besides, I got a _ton_ of things to tell Roadie. Wouldn’t want to let him get used to all this peace and quiet.”

Roadhog. Oh, fuck. She’d conveniently forgotten that little detail. But she’s not about to renege on the deal, not now she’s actually making progress. She’ll have to run it by Winston in the morning. She’s going to have a hell of a job convincing him it’s not the worst idea she’s ever had. Besides. Maybe Junkrat’s right. Maybe he isn’t as scary as he looks.

Her hand wavers at the lock. When she looks back, he’s already fiddling with his prosthetic again. It’s like she’s already gone. Or perhaps, it’s just that she doesn’t really matter now he’s gleaned what he wanted from her. She swallows down the ‘goodnight’ she’d considered issuing and leaves him there, cross-legged on the floor, sifting idly through the rusting scrap that once constituted his leg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who has read & commented & left kudos, it's so cool & you are all brilliant & i hope you continue to enjoy this little story. thanks to em for being the best cheerleader. and thanks to you. yes, you there, with the face. you rock.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a reason junkers never shower, and only part of it is a morbid terror of soap.

The dulcet tones of an excitable Australian issue forth from the workshop at a not inconsiderable volume. Tracer can hear him from halfway down the corridor, a stuck record chanting the same words over and over: “Hog! Oi, Hog! Hog! Hoggie! _Hoggie_ , you bastard! Over here!”

She stops in her tracks. What merry hell is he coordinating in there? It sounds like a ball pit at a birthday party, not a functioning workshop filled with potentially dangerous machinery. She hopes they’re being supervised in there, because the idea of Junkrat running wild with a hacksaw is enough to make her shudder. There must be a reason he’s missing two of his limbs.

Inside the workshop she finds Reinhardt working at one of the smaller benches, bashing dents out of his armour with a comically small hammer. He looks up at Tracer as she enters. His baleful stare suggests that he was perhaps a little unprepared for Junkrat’s improbable energy.

From somewhere behind her comes the sound of metal clashing against metal, punctuated by the occasional “Fuck!” She tries not to wince as she turns to Reinhardt, smiling apologetically. “How’re your bones?” she asks, leaning against the edge of the bench.

“Mending,” Reinhardt says, pushing his spectacles back up his nose with a forefinger. “Unlike my armour, which I suspect is beyond repair. If only Torbjörn were here, I wouldn’t have to make do with this old tin can.”

“Isn’t he on his way?”

Reinhardt waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, he says he is, but who can believe him? He says so many things. He’s been promising me a set of gold-plated armour for years. A helmet shaped like a lion’s head, he says, the most beautiful craftsmanship I’ll ever see in my life. Hah! _Hoffen und harren macht manchen zum Narren._ ”

She stares blankly. “Yes. Absolutely. Um…”

“Your friend.” He lowers his voice, leaning forward; given Reinhardt’s prodigious musculature the gesture is perhaps not as subtle as he had intended. “And his friend. They make a lot of mess, don’t they?”

For the first time, she dares glance over her shoulder. She expects a turbulent sea of spare parts, a vista of strewn scrap gleaming beneath naked lightbulbs, and above them Junkrat, presiding over his chaos like a mad, triumphant king. And perhaps all of that is true, but all she sees is Roadhog, silent and enormous, an immovable mountain of a man; his masked face is impassive, unreadable, and somehow that’s even worse.

She turns back to Reinhardt, suppressing a shiver. “The big bloke,” she whispers, aware that he must still be looking at her. “Has he been any trouble?”

“Oh, goodness no, he’s been good as gold.” Tracer cringes at the volume of his voice, suppresses the urge to look back over her shoulder. “It seems that the rat boy and he had a discussion of sorts. Perhaps my services here are unnecessary after all. I haven’t heard so much as a peep from him. The other one, well…” He picks up his tiny hammer, pinging delicately at a small pockmark in one of his gauntlets. “If he did half as much work as he did talking, he could have six spare legs and one for Sunday best.”

As if on cue, a strident demand: “Roadie, you great tub of guts, stop gawking and help, would you?”

“Are you sure they’re friends?” Tracer asks.

Reinhardt peers at her over the rims of his spectacles. “Well, neither has punched the other so far. That seems a reasonable indication. A good thing, too, because I’m in no condition yet to break up fistfights.”

She’s not sure she believes that. He might be old as the hills, but Reinhardt’s durability is the stuff of legend. Besides which, even without the heft and bulk of his armour the sheer size of him is an effective deterrent; he must be at least at tall as Roadhog, if not quite the circumference. There’s a reason he was chosen to supervise today.

“Tracer!” Junkrat greets her with the enthusiasm of an old friend. She turns, sees him sitting cross-legged on the work bench with a wrench in one hand, a soldering iron aloft in the other. She tries not to wince too visibly; she has a feeling that might only encourage him. “Right nice workshop you got here. Look, there’s running water and all sorts. Electricity! You lot must be rolling in it.”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth; that a sizeable chunk of their remaining wealth is in this room, in the guise of tools and equipment. Tools he’s waving around with cheerful abandon like he’s conducting an invisible orchestra. “Oh sure,” she says. “We basically shit money. What are you doing, exactly?”

“Mm? Oh, just making a bomb.”

“You’re…” She almost chokes on the rest of her sentence. His smile is almost serene. “Wait, no, I didn’t say a flipping word about bombs. I _said_ you could fix up your bloody leg!”

He smiles. “Already done it.”

Tracer points angrily to the stump of his leg, wrapped in what appears to be the same grubby bandages he removed the night before. “No you bloody well haven’t!”

“Sure I have. Hoggie’s painting it. Making it look pretty, ain’t you Hog?”

She turns. Roadhog’s vast bulk materialises before her like an oncoming truck. She flinches instinctively; his fists alone are almost the size of her head, and are mere inches from the tip of her nose. And…Jesus, is he wearing black nail varnish? She looks up at that masked face, at the lenses set like pale moons into the heavy black leather, blank and impenetrable and she wonders whether he’s the kind of man who holds a grudge.

“Oi, don’t worry about him.” Junkrat is practically lounging on the work bench now, propped upright by a single elbow. “He’s good as gold. Told him you’ve been keeping an eye out for me while he’s been snoozing, so no worries. Barely even remembers the tranquiliser thing at all, right Hog?”

A series of grunts issue from beneath Roadhog’s mask, mumbled and all but inaudible. Tracer isn’t even sure they’re real words, but Junkrat shoots upright, indignant, eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “All right, maybe I _did_ say she’s been nagging me to death, but the rest is slander! Pure slander. Don’t listen to him, Tracer, he’s dumb as a bag of fuckin’ hammers. No idea what he’s on about.”

Roadhog turns back to his work, plucking a dripping paintbrush from the worktop. He layers a fresh coat of bright orange paint over the knee segment, surprisingly deft and delicate with his brushstrokes. He grunts a reply, short but apparently to the point, because Junkrat slouches back, scowling. “Oh, go root your boot,” he says, entirely without malice.

“Are you even speaking English?” Tracer mutters.

It’s as though he’d forgotten her presence entirely. He looks back up at her, beaming now, rearranging his limbs so he’s perched on the edge of the work bench, legs dangling. “Here, take a look,” he says, scooping his creation up into his hand. Tracer shuffles over. It doesn’t look like much; two halves of a shell lying open in the cup of his palm, wires protruding like a tangle of innards. It makes no sense to her, but then, she reminds herself, she’s not in the habit of cobbling together explosives whenever the situation permits, because she is a normal human being. “So the beauty of this,” Junkrat says, winding a loose arm around her shoulders to pull her closer – her nose is practically pressed against the bomb casing – “is that it’s remote detonated. Radio controlled. So you can throw ‘em in, wait for a crowd and boom! Like fireworks. Ugly fireworks, heh. Rigged it up with a wireless doorbell I found in a drawer. God knows what you lot are doing with a doorbell lying about. Can’t imagine the pizza bloke comes out this far.”

His arm weighs heavy on her shoulders. She’s faintly alarmed by how warm he is; his skin radiates heat as if with fever, though he doesn’t seem sick. At least he doesn’t smell any worse at close proximity, though the acridity of the petrol burns the inside of her nose. “It’s so small,” she says, prodding at the casing with one finger. “I doubt it’d even bruise.”

“Bruise? Nah, this is just to cause a fuss. Distract ‘em, y’know? Ain’t supposed to hurt. I mean, might take an eye out, but that’s just a side-effect.”

“Hell of a side effect.” She glances across at the workbench, where there appears to have been an avalanche of spare parts; coiled wire and batteries, washers bright as new pennies. Half buried beneath an assortment of screwdrivers is a large, creased sheet of paper. There’s something scrawled on it in wobbly wax crayon. “What’s that?”

“Mm? Oh, that?” He leans over, yanks the page out from beneath the debris in one smooth motion; somehow, the screwdrivers stay in place. “I’ve been working on a few upgrades. It’s all theory though, ‘cos you don’t have the parts I need. I made this gun for pigface when we were on the road. Still a right beaut, but could be even better, y’know? This here-” jabbing a finger at some disembodied component or other “-that’s where the scrap goes in, right, and it comes out scattered, like buckshot.” His fingers flutter, mimicking the motion. “And this here, this is the compactor. Smooshes all the scrap down into one big fat projectile. Like the man himself, right?” He nudges her in the ribs with a pointy elbow. She wonders if he’s capable of keeping still for more than three seconds at a time. “So anyway, I thought – ‘cos I’m full of good ideas - what if you could rig it so you could make a scrap _grenade_?”

“Yes,” she says, vaguely. “Of course you did.”

He beams. She’s close enough that she can see the glimmer of gold teeth. There’s something weirdly dissonant about that; a man who is apparently allergic to soap and water, but cares enough about his teeth to shell out for expensive falsies. “Okay, so here’s how it works,” he says, and launches into a long and enthusiastic explanation of the individual components, how they fit together and how they’ll produce the improvised grenades. It’s punctuated by a great deal of wild gesticulating, so much so that Tracer has to take a step backwards to avoid an excitable backhand. Despite the distinct mad scientist vibe, it’s apparent that he actually knows what he’s talking about; she’s surprised to note that somewhere in that rat’s nest of a brain lurks a competent engineer.

“You know anything about circuits?” she asks, when he finally runs out of steam.

He shrugs. “Knew enough to make my hand and my brain cooperate. Figure that counts for something, don’t it?”

A ghost of an idea forms at the back of her mind. A foolish, terrible idea.

“Yeah,” she says, with a smile. “I guess it does.”

*

Tracer is surprised to find McCree manning the comms link – though admittedly he appears to be paying more attention to his half-finished game of solitaire than the comms panel itself. They’re hardly a hive of activity at the best of times. He smells like a half-smoked packet of cigarillos, pungent and earthy. “Makes a change to see you busy for once,” she says.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.” He peers up at her with those dark eyes, unreasonably long lashes, girl-pretty despite the masculinity of his features; it’s almost unfair how beautiful he is. “Matter of fact, it’s supposed to be Genji’s responsibility, but since he’s convalescing…” he shakes his head. “The man heals practically overnight and still Angela’s advocating bedrest. You know about him and Zenyatta?”

“I…” she’s momentarily frozen to the spot. Genji and Zenyatta? She’s heard that some humans have taken omnics as lovers, though she’s never thought too hard about the logistics involved – her staunch pro-omnic politics have yet to extend so far as thinking about _that._ Are omnics even equipped for it? What possible purpose would it serve? She’s a little horrified at her own vivid embarrassment; she’s supposed to be a progressive, and a grown adult besides…

McCree chuckles. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he says, smirking a little, and there she goes with the schoolgirl blushing again. “Well, not far as I know, anyway. Zenyatta was Genji’s mentor. Back in his wandering-the-wilderness, who-the-hell-am-I days.  He helped him come to terms with his augmentation. Upshot of which is, the two of them ain’t stopped talking since he got here.”

“And now Winston’s got you working for your dinner. That must be a shock to the system.”

He idly waves a card at her. “There’s that mouth of yours again, Lena sweetheart. You know, I ought to report you to Mercy for insubordination. Maybe she’d put you in charge of Winston’s next dental exam.”

“I am in the room, Jesse,” Winston says, not peering up from his work.

“Careful, old man.” She smiles as she turns her back and knows he’s smiling too, however much he chides her. Playing the bratty little sister does come with a few perks. “Wouldn’t want someone to sabotage your Stairlift.”

Winston finally looks up as she approaches, settling on the edge of his desk. The workshop is his usual haunt, but she can hardly blame him for bringing his blueprints up into the relative peace and quiet of the comms room. Far less chance of his fur ending up singed. “Have you come to tell me that we no longer have a workshop?” he asks. His eyes are large amber marbles, serene behind his glasses. “Strange. I’d have thought I’d be able to hear the explosion from up here.”

“Pleased to report that the workshop is largely intact.” She fires off a snappy salute, an archaic gesture which provokes a small smile. “He uh. He _is_ making a bomb though.”

She hears the creak of leather as McCree sits upright in his chair. Winston frowns. “You don’t seem all that worried,” he says.

“Good thing we don’t keep gunpowder lying around, innit?” She glances down at the blueprints, briefly, so as not to embarrass him; of course, he’s working on the communicators. He would be, wouldn’t he? “Actually, I did sort of want to talk to you about that, but if you’re busy…”

He smiles, ever the indulgent uncle. “What’s on your mind, Lena?”

“Okay, so…” she leaps up from her perch, hands held aloft. “I heard you’re having trouble convincing Torbs to come back. And that means we’re short an engineer, right? Specifically a weapons expert.”

“Well yes, but-“

“Hold your horses. I think I’ve solved the problem.” She’s aware that she resembles a faintly maniacal street-corner preacher, and now McCree is staring at her, which doesn’t help matters, but she’s determined now. “This Junkrat bloke. I know he seems like a dangerous nut and, uh, well I’m pretty sure he is-“

“Great salesmanship there,” McCree drawls.

“… _but_ ,” she continues, shooting him a glare, “I was just down in the workshop and Winston, you want to see the sort of stuff he comes up with. I mean yeah, it’s mostly explosives, but there’s other stuff too. A gun that turns scrap metal into buckshot. That kind of thing. And I know that sounds mad, but it’s pretty obvious to me that he knows his shit.”

“Language,” Winston admonishes.

“Right. Sorry. But seriously Winston, it’s perfect. His speciality is repurposing scrap, and we have a _ton_ of broken stuff lying around gathering dust. It’ll hardly cost us a thing, and we’ll get a load of shiny weapons out of it. And get this. His prosthetic arm? He rewired an omnic’s arm to fit a custom neural interface. That’s kind of cool, isn’t it? Tell me we couldn’t use that kind of knowhow around here right now.”

“He certainly sounds skilled. And we could use skill, I won’t deny it. But Lena…” gentle now, and quiet. “It’s not as simple as all that. For one thing, we’ve no means of paying for contractors right now. And even if we did, we know barely anything about either of these men, besides the fact that they were in Ilios to steal something valuable.”

“We can hardly call ourselves law-abiding citizens right now either.” That, at least, prompts a nod of recognition from McCree, who turns back to his game, apparently satisfied with her line of reasoning. “I don’t disagree with you. They’re an unknown quantity and this is _our_ space, all of us. It’d be presumptuous as hell of me to invite a couple of strangers into the fold. Except that both of you authorised their detainment in the first place. Mercy as well.” She folds her arms across her chest, a gesture of triumph, or perhaps plain stubbornness. “Junkrat helped me out in Ilios. He could have made a break for it, but he didn’t. And I’m not about to pretend that me and him are best mates, or that I trust him completely, because I don’t. He’s messy and noisy and he smells bad. But I’m pretty sure that when your interview technique consists of taking someone prisoner, it’s _usually_ considered good form to offer them the job.”

Winston’s expression is impenetrable; the nuances of his simian features are still difficult for Tracer to read, even after all these years. “And as to payment for their services?”

“Leave that to me.” At this point, it’s more about the principle of the matter than the actual outcome; Tracer has always fought hard to be taken as seriously as the others. Before the accident, they’d seen her as a child, peppy and upbeat and straight out of a cereal advert. Afterwards, it had been even worse; she’d proven herself tough and capable, fought her way back into temporal permanence and found herself regarded as something terribly fragile, something liable to shatter at any given moment. She’s painfully aware of her own statistical improbability; that every moment she spends here in the present is the sole provenance of the device she wears strapped to her chest. But she refuses to think of it as something to pity; just as McCree’s arm is just another part of him, so this is just another of her many quirks. She wants them to see it that way too. “I’ll vouch for them. I’ll make sure they stay in line. You can trust me, Winston. You know you can.”

There’s a sudden burst of activity from the comms panel; buttons flash like Christmas tree lights, and she takes momentary pleasure in watching McCree hitting them all at random. He is a man of many skills, smooth and smart and articulate, but there’s a mean-spirited kind of fun to be had in sticking him in front of unfamiliar tech and watching him squirm.

“Trusting you has never been an issue, Lena,” Winston says, and sighs, long and deep. “All right. We’ll trial it for a bit. But before anything else, please, will you at least find out if they’re fully housetrained?”

*

“…there are rules, though,” Tracer finishes.

Junkrat’s brow creases in suspicion at this. “What kind of rules? I don’t do well with rules. Roadie eats rules for breakfast.”

“Tough. Listen. Number one. You’re armed only when you have express permission to be. That’s not discrimination, either, ‘cos aside from McCree nobody within the Watchpoint goes around armed.” She looks to the pair of them for dissent. There is none. They don’t exactly look happy about it, but they’re not arguing; evidently the prospect of full room, board & unlimited workshop access is too good a deal for them to quibble over right now. “Number two. You’ll assist with Watchpoint business. That includes external missions, engineering jobs assigned to you by Winston, and the day-to-day running of the place.” She looks Junkrat dead in the eye. “That means housekeeping.”

The creased brow intensifies. He looks doubtfully up at Roadhog, who maintains a dignified silence. “What, like mopping floors and shit?”

“And shit, yes. Washing dishes, laundry duty, that kind of thing. Keeping your quarters clean and tidy. Don’t look at me like that, all of us chip in. It’s the only way things get done around here. Which reminds me. You both need to take showers. As in, once a week _minimum._ Can’t have you getting engine grease on everything.”

They confer for a moment, _sotto voce_ , though it would appear that quiet is purely a theoretical concept for Junkrat. There’s something almost funny about the way Roadhog leans in, hunching his huge shoulders until he’s more or less on Junkrat’s level, a strangely deferential gesture given his obvious size advantage. Finally Junkrat looks up.

“We’d both rather transfer our bathing water allowance to our drinking water allowance,” he says, quite seriously.

At first Tracer is thoroughly confused. “Water allowance? We don’t have anything like that here.”

Junkrat and Roadhog exchange glances. Even with Roadhog’s mask she can read their faces, and she’s a little taken aback by what she sees there. What kind of weird culture do they come from that water is rationed? That you can literally choose between bathing and having a little more to drink? How is that a matter for negotiation? “What, not at all?” Junkrat asks. His tone suggests disbelief, as though she _must_ be having him on. “You just…what, you drink however much you like?”

“Well, nobody’s advocating you drink a swimming pool’s worth, but yeah. You can go nuts. Water comes out of the tap. Doesn’t it where you’re from?”

A sudden burst of laughter emerges muffled from Roadhog’s covered mouth, a low rumble like an engine starting up. He mumbles something to Junkrat, who shakes his head, amused but exasperated. “You really don’t know a thing, do you?” he says.

Tracer opens her mouth to speak and realises she doesn’t really have a response; she’s unprepared for this conversation, still smarting from the previous one, and she finds herself unaccountably annoyed at the whole situation. “Weekly showers, minimum. You’ve got no excuse. Shower block is down the hall and to your left. Toilets too. You know how toilets work, don’t you?”

Junkrat shrugs. “Well I don’t piss in the sink, if that’s what you mean.”

“Right. Good.” She exhales, releasing the tension in her diaphragm. “So, are you with us?”

Roadhog bends to reach Junkrat’s ear, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like _‘I dunno about this’_.

“Pigface has a point,” Junkrat says, leaning back in his seat. His new prosthetic is firmly anchored to his leg. It looks only marginally more stable than the previous one. “We tried going legit before and it didn’t work out. Not so sure it’s going to be any different this time. You lot seem decent, but at the end of the day you’re still an _organisation_ , you know? And playing ball with omnics too.” He shakes his head. “Yeah, nah. I don’t know if we’re cut out for going straight.”

She sighs. “It’d be nice if we were legit, but we’re not. Why do you think we all live here, in the middle of bloody nowhere? Our equipment’s falling apart and we don’t have the money to replace it. We’re basically outlaws, Junkrat. There’s nothing legit about Overwatch anymore. They’d have us behind bars in a heartbeat if only they could catch us. You don’t want to be a part of an _organisation_? Fine, don’t be. It was just an idea, that’s all. We’ll drop you off on the mainland tomorrow and call it quits. You go back to doing…whatever it is that you do. We’ll forget the whole idea.”

There’s a long, slightly awkward pause. And then Junkrat speaks up.

“Well,” he says, and there’s that beartrap smile again, all wide mouth and sharp canines. “I never said we _definitely_ weren’t cut out for it, did I?”

*

As Tracer exits what they can presumably now refer to as ‘the Junkers’ quarters’ she almost bumps straight into McCree. He’s heading down the corridor with a datapad, pace rapid, looking unusually harried.

“You seen Angela?” He’s brusque, businesslike. That too is unusual; he almost always takes the time to greet her properly, rib her a little for some reason or another.

“I think she’s in with Genji. I’m not sure.” Tracer eyes the datapad; he’s holding it close to his chest like a valuable secret. “Is everything all right?”

He’s grudging in his revelation, but she feels a small thrill of pride that he trusts her enough to tell her. “Got an encrypted message. I’m no codebreaker, but from what I can decipher, it sounds like there’s need of us in Tunisia.”

“Tunisia?” It’s not usually on their radar. “Why? What’s there that’s so important?”

McCree’s expression is grim. “Sounds like Talon business,” he says. “But more than that. The message was sent by someone who refers to themselves as ‘an old friend’. They make several references throughout the message to code phrases only the old guard know.” He taps the datapad with an index finger. “This isn’t a random cry for help. Whoever sent this used to be one of us.”

Her heart clatters against her ribcage. Of course, she would think of _her_. Even with everything that has passed – Numbani, King’s Row – even after she had looked in Amelie’s eyes and seen a complete stranger, she still holds onto that barest scrap of hope. The childish fantasy that someday, Amelie will come back to them. That she could ever _be_ Amelie again. “Who do you think-” Tracer begins, but McCree is already striding down the hall towards the infirmary, his steps loud and purposeful, and she forces herself to extinguish the tiny spark of hope that has blossomed inside of her before it burns her yet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter: talky talky  
> next chapter: less talky, more shooty bang sticks.
> 
> Thanks for reading, for the comments and support, for your continued kindness, I am terrifically grateful and cannot possibly thank you all enough, so here is a capslock: THANK YOU.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you can take the bloke out of Junkertown, but you can't take Junkertown out of the bloke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how I said there would be shooty bang sticks in this chapter?
> 
> Well, there is shooty bang sticks  
> It's just that there's a lot of talky talky first  
> I am truly sorry

 

There’s something about having everyone gathered around the dinner table like this that seems horribly final to Tracer, a kind of last supper at which everyone glances a little nervously at the three newcomers relegated to the ‘Kid’s End’ of the table. This is usually where Tracer sits, because according to McCree she’s all elbows when she eats. Today, though, Roadhog sits like a large and malevolent king at the end of the table, cutlery mismatched, silently awaiting the arrival of food. Junkrat is next to her, forming  a barrier between her and Roadhog; perhaps more importantly, her presence is a barrier between the Junkers and Zenyatta.

Omnics do not consume human food. They don’t consume a great deal. Zenyatta himself insists that sunlight will sustain him just fine. Tracer doesn’t know if this is metaphorical or literal, but he certainly seems to spend a lot of time on the Watchpoint roof, basking in the warm Gibraltarian sun. Mercy has laid a place for him all the same, and he appears to be having an inordinate amount of fun levitating his spoon.

“What’s for tea?” Tracer asks.

A bevy of tongue-in-cheek answers flood back from the happier days of her childhood: _a poke in the eye. Stale bread and water. Cream of nothing soup._ But Reinhardt’s sense of humour is somewhat esoteric, and apparently mealtimes are not the proper time for jokes, because he brandishes his oversized cooking pot with pride, like the severed head of a vanquished foe, and announces: “Lamb stew with dumplings. And plenty of it. I hope you all have healthy appetites, or you’ll be eating leftover stew for the next two weeks.”

The food is ladled into bowls, steaming hot; it smells divine, Tracer thinks: rich gravy and thick-cut vegetables, chunks of meat cooked until they melt on the tongue; if she closes her eyes and inhales deeply, she can almost taste it. Her stomach rumbles loudly, as if on cue. She knows she’ll be one of the last served: Reinhardt adheres to hierarchy, attending first to Winston and Mercy, McCree, Genji, then Tracer and the newcomers. Junkrat’s eyes widen to dinner-plate proportions as Reinhardt serves a healthy helping of stew into his waiting bowl. It’s as though he’s unaccustomed to proper portions. Given his wiry build – ribs like concertinas lurking just beneath the lean muscle, hipbones that could poke someone’s eye out – it’s not unthinkable to Tracer that he might be more than a little undernourished.

“It’s all right,” Mercy smiles encouragingly at Junkrat, who is holding his spoon like it’s something dangerous. “We don’t say grace or anything. You can eat if you like.”

He looks up at Roadhog, who tips him the smallest of nods. And then he’s in, shovelling stew into his open mouth with the frantic motion of a clockwork drumming monkey. He eats with such aggression that even Mercy pauses to stare for a moment, distracted from her own noisy slurping.

Roadhog lifts his own tiny spoon. There’s a small concealed zipper running the width of the mask, beneath which a mouth presumably lurks. “Slow down,” he says. “You’ll make yourself sick.” His voice is low, rumbling, like the engine of some huge, heavy vehicle; Tracer is surprised at how much clearer he sounds without inches of leather muffling his words.

Junkrat pauses, licking gravy from his chin with an alarmingly long tongue. “This,” he says, staring gravely at Tracer, “is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Can you believe this grub, Hog?”

“It’s just stew,” Tracer says. “And most of it is on your face.”

He grabs a bread roll from the basket. His hands are still caked with soot, Tracer notes; his elbows leave grey smears on the gingham tablecloth. She doesn’t know why Mercy bothered with the formality. Roadhog mutters something else, quieter this time, and Junkrat cackles, stuffing bread into his wide open mouth. “Better than lizard,” he says, and on this seeming non-sequitur he returns to the business of draining his bowl.

Roadhog, for his part, is almost dainty with his food. He lifts the spoon slowly to his mouth, sips a little of the stew as though it’s a cup of tea and he’s in polite company. Lowers the spoon to the bowl, repeats the motion. He’s so slow and methodical that it’s almost hypnotic to watch, like a metronome ticking back and forth.

Zenyatta lowers his levitating spoon gently to the table. “There are few human experiences I envy, but the pleasure you take from your nutrition is one of them.”

“It must be odd,” Tracer says, through a large mouthful of fluffy dumpling. “Watching us stick stuff in our faces like this.”

His laughter is melodic, like a windchime. “I have spent enough time around your kind that I have grown used to it. It was quite alien at first. When Genji and I lived in Nepal I frequently forgot his need for sustenance. He would have to remind me quite often. And as I’m sure you are aware, we have no grocery stores near the temple.”

“He would make me catch my own food,” Genji says, from the other side of the table. Tracer eyes Junkrat from the corner of her eye, watching for his reaction – he’s liable to take Genji for an omnic, and she doesn’t know how a confrontation would pan out. Not good for Junkrat, she’s guessing. Roadhog has said nothing of Zenyatta’s presence so far, but his mask affords him an anonymity of expression, and he does not seem liable to say out loud whatever he might be thinking. “He would take me to the stream and have me sit for hours. I would be weak with hunger and there he’d be, sustained by sunlight, telling me to _overcome my base human instincts._ ” He mimics Zenyatta’s soft monotone with surprising accuracy. It almost makes Tracer splutter stew all over the tablecloth. “Eventually, by luck or by skill, I would catch a fish. And then I would have to prepare and cook it, because of course, my Master is not learned in the ways of human food preparation.”

“I remember that first meal we shared when Genji came back to us,” Mercy says, through a mouthful of bread. “Enchiladas. Smothered in cheese. I swear he almost kissed Jesse full on the mouth that day.”

Tracer glances across to Junkrat and Roadhog. Junkrat looks noticeably uncomfortable, but he’s keeping his mouth occupied with the remnants of Roadhog’s mostly untouched stew. She tries to make eye contact, assure him she’s grateful, but he merely scowls down at his food, hunched protectively over his bowl as though someone might try to take it from him at any moment. And Roadhog, well…

He re-fastens the zip at his mouth. Mumbles something inaudible through the leather.

“Nah, leave it mate,” Junkrat says, quiet, not looking up at him. “Made a promise, didn’t I? ‘n that means you got to toe the line as well.”

Roadhog gives a small shrug. His shoulders are mountainous. He could probably crush Junkrat’s skull with his hands alone. Tracer is a little amazed that he accedes so easily to Junkrat’s command. What kind of a hold, she wonders, does this scrawny, chaotic man have over his imposing colleague?

She looks across the table. Winston meets her gaze, adjusting his glasses. He gives her a small, solemn nod. It’s a tiny gesture, but Tracer’s heart swells with pride all the same. It means he trusts her; he’s observed first-hand her ability to keep the Junkers in check, and this dinner – this unusually formal seated affair – is a test she has passed with flying colours. No fistfights over the breadbasket. Not even a cross word. She has been tested as a responsible adult – not as scrappy little tomboy Tracer, or fragile Lena, lost and alone in the blank void between present and future, but as herself. And she has not been found wanting.

*

The coordinates McCree decoded lead them across the Mediterranean, over the azure waters and burnt terracotta rooftops of Carthage and out into the desert. The sprawling hardpan is spread out before them, sprawling and endless, rough-carved out of rock the colour of honey and beyond, undulating mountains of golden sand. They come to land in a flat expanse outside of Dehima, a commune a few kilometres from the Libyan border. A mushroom cloud of yellowish dust blooms as they land. It is hardly a stealthy arrival.

The air outside the ship is dry and unbelievably hot. Dust filters up into Tracer’s nostrils; a relentless sun beats down on their collective heads. She squints in the harsh light, scanning the horizon for their target. “Are you sure we’re in the right spot? I don’t see any…oh.”

The distant complex is built out of the same ochre rock as its surroundings; a towering glass spire is all that marks it out. Bright sun reflects off each individual pane, rendering the structure a shimmering needle comprised, it seems, entirely of light. In this rocky, arid landscape it resembles an alien structure: some kind of weird, abandoned moon-base, perhaps, or an office block on Mars.

“It’s empty,” McCree says, from behind her. She hears the soft jingle of his spurs as he approaches. Never was one for stealth, McCree. “Used to belong to a robotics corporation. An Omnium of sorts. They built omnics for the oil industry, but the fields have long since run dry. Travel north for a while and there’s oil fields standing empty for miles. Kind of looks like the world ended. Nobody out here but the Berbers, now, and they steer clear of the place.”

“Why’s that?” Tracer asks. “Is it cursed?”

He eyes her doubtfully. “It’s structurally unstable,” he says. “See that tower? It was built to withstand sandstorms. But it’s been standing out there for the best part of fifty years, and the storms out here have been getting worse and worse these last couple decades. Rumour has it that the omnics who avoided decommissioning set up here once the humans left. Made an uneasy alliance with the Berber people, kept well out of their way.”

“A sisterhood,” Zenyatta says. His soundless approach always startles Tracer a little. “Not unlike we of the Shambali. They too believed that human and omnic might live together in harmony. That we were all one in the Iris.”

“What happened to them?” Tracer asks.

“We do not know.” Zenyatta’s face remains perfectly expressionless, but somehow he’s able to convey his sorrow with a mere tilt of the head. “There were those of the sisterhood who came to Nepal, to study alongside the Shambali. Their faith bore similarities to our own, but there were a great many differences. We learned much from one another. I believe some of them are there still, living among my brothers.”

“But the omnics that lived here…”

“Not only here, but in many places. Scattered, like the Berber people with whom they traded. I believe there were enclaves all across Africa, living in isolation. A great many humans fear us still.” She knows what he means by this, though he’s perhaps too tactful to say it out loud: _a great many humans want to destroy us._ “I do not know what became of them. They disappeared. Certainly, they no longer dwell in this place. Perhaps they felt unsafe and moved away.”

“All right.” McCree turns, addressing the entire crew, gathered now under the blazing desert sun. A trickle of sweat runs the length of Tracer’s spine; she’s already feeling the prickle of burning skin across the bridge of her nose. Damn her stupid English skin. “I’m pretty sure you can already see our target destination. This is a simple extraction. We go in, we locate the target, we extract the target. That means we bring them back alive.” He takes care not to address anyone in particular, but his eyes pass over Junkrat more than once. “Force is authorised, but only where it’s required. Stealth is preferential. We don’t know what kind of numbers we’ll be dealing with once inside, so best not to engage at all if you can help it. We’re forming into two teams. Mercy and Roadhog will come with me. Tracer, you’ll be leading up the second team.”

“Junkrat and Zenyatta,” she says, deadpan.

“Zenyatta’s agreed to act as medic,” McCree says, almost blithe, as though there can’t possibly be any issue with putting Zenyatta and a virulent omnist in the same squad. “Your team will secure an escape route and defend it. Your point of entry is marked on the map I uploaded earlier. We’ll keep in touch via the communicators. Any questions?”

She does, in fact, have many questions. She’s got questions coming out of her ears, but she knows full well she’ll get nothing from McCree, not while he’s in squad leader mode. And besides. This is her moment, isn’t it? This is where she proves herself capable and in control. She’s leading her own squad; she can count the number of times she’s been trusted with that responsibility on the fingers of one hand. The last time was in King’s Row. She dismisses that thought with a shake of her head.

“Good.” He looks to Mercy, pristine white and gold in the sunlight, then to Roadhog, whose silent acquiescence seems to please him well enough. “Then let’s move out.”

*

“Why didn’t I bring suncream?”

The three of them are resting briefly in the shade afforded by the exterior walls of the compound.

(She’d practically begged them for a quick rest; sweat-drenched and panting, her water canteen almost drained, she’d collapsed into the small pool of shade and lay there, refusing to move, muttering rude epithets about the climate and where the entire country of Tunisia could shove it.

“Why didn’t you just use that time magic of yours?” Junkrat had asked. “Could’ve saved yourself the sunburn.”

“What, and leave the two of you alone together?” She’d snorted. “Fat bloody chance, mate.”)

In fact, only Tracer is resting in the shade; Zenyatta’s sleek chrome glimmers unbearably bright as he basks, perfectly still even while suspended in midair. Even Junkrat, loaded down with impossibly bulky kit, appears to be enjoying the climate.

“Reminds me of home,” he says, stretching his legs out. His bare skin shows not even the faintest hint of a burn. Soot and grime must be an effective sunscreen. “Sand gets bloody everywhere, though. You’ll be tipping it out of your boot for weeks. Finding it in all kinds of funny places. Heh.”

“I hate sand,” Tracer mutters, a little petulantly. “I hate sun. I hate _deserts_.”

“That’s ‘cos you’re a typical whinging pom,” Junkrat says, adjusting the position of the device on his back. It looks like a tyre of some kind; Tracer isn’t quite sure what it is or how it works, but she is reasonably confident that it explodes. “Sunshine’s good for you. ‘Course, you wouldn’t know, not like you ever get sunshine where you’re from. Surprised you ain’t all walking about with rickets.”

“Better rickets than skin cancer,” she retorts, then realises how mean she sounds. She leans her head back, resting sweaty hair against the warm rock. “We better get inside,” she says. “Start securing the exit. God, I wish I had an ice-cream. Or an ice-cube. Anything iced.”

A soft, melodic hum strikes up in the vicinity of her left ear. She flinches instinctively, but when she turns it’s only one of Zenyatta’s strange floating orbs. This one is the pale, luminous gold of Mercy’s hair, and she feels the soreness of her already-burnt nose begin to abate; a blessed coolness envelops her entire body.

“You are welcome,” Zenyatta says. He sounds like he’s smiling.

“Come on then,” Junkrat says, getting to his feet. A shower of dark sand spills from the creased fabric of his shorts. “Let’s get moving. Don’t want them to get the jump on us. Who are they, anyway?”

“Talon,” Tracer says, for what must be the fourth time. “The ones who were in Ilios. Remember? When you blew your own leg up?”

“Shower of bastards,” Junkrat says, with feeling. He hoists his makeshift grenade launcher up onto his shoulder; it’s about as long as Tracer, and probably about as heavy too. “All right. Let’s go make a mess.”

“No, no,” she says. “We’re going in quietly. Stealth. You know what stealth is, right?”

“Beg your pardon. I can be quiet when I need to be.”

Tracer dusts down her leggings, shoots a dubious glance over at a typically expressionless Zenyatta. “Right, good. Be quiet, then. No bombs unless I say so. Okay?”

He lowers the grenade launcher with a theatrical sigh. “You’re no fun anymore.”

At the rear of the compound is a large courtyard. It looks as though it might have been lush and green once, an artificial oasis in this unforgiving desert; capacious beds of cracked, dusty marble stand monument to long-dead fountains, channels of flowing water running the length of the courtyard; brown, desiccated ivy chokes the inners walls. They must have had money, whoever built this place. It must have been like a miniature paradise, once upon a time; an unlikely desert palace built by rich men and abandoned without so much as a second thought. She wonders if the omnics they built here ever rebelled against their masters.

The great glass spire is terrifying up close. Its instability is all too obvious; cracked windowpanes abound, rust blooming up and down the structure like a disease. They enter the building via a back door. It’s chained shut, but the links have been badly eroded over time; they practically crumble beneath Tracer’s fingers as she yanks at the chain.

Inside, the building is dark, blessedly cool. The air smells like mildew, the silent accumulation of decades’ worth of dust. It’s easy to believe that this place has not seen human occupation for longer than Tracer has been alive.

“I can sense no movement,” Zenyatta says. “If our adversaries are indeed here, they are not yet close by.”

“Well, that’s a good start.” Tracer taps the chronal accelerator twice, reassured by the answering hum. Everything is in place. She’s determined that this recon will go well. “Okay,” she says, pressing a button on her gauntlet. A holographic map splutters into life, illuminating a blizzard of dust motes. “According to the map this corridor leads to some kind of large factory area. It looks like it’ll be pretty open, so stick to cover if you can find it. We’re aiming not to be seen or heard. Junkrat, your job is to fortify all but this far entrance…” she indicates the point on the map. The hologram blips momentarily under her touch. “And this door here, which’ll be our escape route. There’re four other entry points. Can you handle that?”

He throws her a mechanical thumbs-up. “I’ve got the goods,” he says. Her eyes pass momentarily up and down his body, laden like a donkey with an array of dangerous-looking items. There’s even a fucking _bear trap_ hanging from his belt. It looks handmade, the teeth wickedly sharp, hinges thick with rust. Surely a tetanus risk. “Leave it to me.”

“Okay. And Zenyatta, you’re to provide medical support if it becomes necessary. I don’t expect you to participate in combat if it comes to that, but if you could be an extra set of eyes and ears I’d appreciate it.”

“He’d have to have eyes and ears first,” Junkrat says. Is it just a quip, or can Tracer detect a hint of a sneer in his tone? At least he referred to Zenyatta as a ‘he’ rather than an ‘it’.

Zenyatta withdraws the golden orb he’d bestowed upon Tracer, bringing it back into rotation with its companions. She tests her sunburnt nose with the pads of her fingers, tentative; whatever power the orb holds appears to be genuinely curative. Some kind of miniature biotic field, perhaps. “My preferred path is that of peace,” he says, almost apologetically. “Though, where nonlethal methods might prove beneficial, I would be glad to assist.”

He is so humble and unassuming in spite of his obvious power. Tracer suppresses a smile. “Do what you can, Zenyatta. The shooty-bang stuff is on me. Come on. Let’s secure the point.”

*

The factory floor is cavernous, a large and cluttered room, like the hull of a long-capsized ship. Thin light trickles in from high-up windows, penetrating the gloom, though barely down to ground level. All around them lay the husks of old machinery, long dormant; datapads layered thick with dust, once-white labcoats slumped on the floor like their occupants were spirited away in the middle of a shift. There’s something eerie about it, the way their footsteps echo off the tiles, the click-drag of Junkrat’s leg as he traverses the debris littering the aisles. It’s like the last shift clocked out and simply never bothered to come back.

“Look at all this scrap,” Junkrat whispers. His eyes are bright, his tone that of hushed wonderment; he turns a slow circle as he walks, taking in the sheer scale and variety of the machinery. It’s like Christmas has come early for him.

“We’re not here to loot, so don’t even think about it.” Tracer says. She keeps one hand at her holster, though there’s no sign that anyone is here. There is a system of catwalks high above them, suspended from the ceiling; she can’t see any movement. She doubts they’d even be stable enough to support the weight of a human being. There are those who’d try it anyway. “First exit is ahead. I’ll cover you.”

They skew left across the factory floor. Tracer’s map indicates that the doorway they are approaching leads to some kind of staff accommodation. It occurs to her that this place must have operated almost like an oil platform, or some kind of military base. The nearest town is miles away. The staff must have lived here as well as worked here, spent their time off in the shade of the olive trees, dipping their toes in the marble pools. It’s comforting to think that might be true, though a smaller, more cynical part of her recognises how unlikely a scenario it is. It’s probable that only those in the upper echelons – the men and women in the glass spire – were ever permitted to enjoy the courtyard oasis. To bask in the warm shade on a quiet afternoon.

They pass the husk of a dead omnic sprawled out on the tiles. The titanium of its body has dulled over time, a slow and progressive decay. Tracer has always thought of omnics as living things, creatures imbued with a soul, just like people; she’s a little unnerved to note that she can barely differentiate this omnic from the machinery around it.

“Only good bot’s a dead bot,” Junkrat announces, neatly stepping over the omnic’s body as though it’s nothing more than scrap. Tracer’s cheeks burn with mortification; she stops beside the dead omnic, keeping one eye on Junkrat as he unlatches some kind of improvised mine from his belt. She’s aware of Zenyatta’s presence above her, the soft hum of the orbs floating in tandem around him.

“I’m sorry,” Tracer says. She doesn’t know if she’s apologising for Junkrat’s rudeness, or for the omnic’s lonely death. She looks up at Zenyatta, who observes the body of his comrade in momentary silence.

“This one died in combat,” he says, indicating the bullet holes in the omnic’s carapace. “They were not of the sisterhood. I suspect they died fighting in the uprising.”

Tracer places a gentle hand on the dead omnic’s shoulder. “I’m sorry all the same,” she says. Somewhere behind them, Junkrat is humming tunelessly as he works. So much for stealth. “What he said was completely inappropriate. His attitude belongs in the past.”

Zenyatta seems to muse over this for a moment. “It was an uncharitable sentiment,” he says, quite diplomatically. “However, it is equally true that some wounds heal faster than others.”

She’s about to ask what he means when a sudden noise in her ear sends her spine rigid with alarm.

“Tracer. Do you copy?” There’s something unpleasantly urgent in McCree’s tone. Tracer gets slowly to her feet, activates the speaker on her own communicator. “Copy. What’s the matter?”

“Something’s not right, Tracer. The intelligence we were given…either I deciphered it wrong, or I’ve been fed false information. There’s nobody at the rendezvous point.”

She looks over at Zenyatta, who is observing her closely. Even without the benefit of facial expression she can sense his curiosity. “What, so we’ve been stood up?”

“Oh, they’re here all right. They just ain’t where they ought to be.” There’s a brief pause as he confers with someone in the background – Mercy, judging by the softness of the tone. Tracer stares up at the catwalk overhead, tracking its path with her eyes. If anyone were watching them, she’s certain they’d be up there somewhere. “Mercy’s detecting at least five biological life signs within the building, possibly more. We’re heading for your location, but in the meantime I need you to stay alert. Retreat at the first sign of trouble, understand?”

“But I-”

“Lena.” Firm, but without cruelty. He’s worried about her, she realises. “I know you’re capable. That’s not the problem. We’re not prepared for this and that’s on me. These people are dangerous, and they’ve got the jump on us now. Just keep out of sight and hold on ‘til we get there, all right?”

“Copy that.” She clicks the speaker off and looks back to Zenyatta, ever patient. “So er. We appear to be in a spot of bother.”

“Oh dear.” He sounds so genuinely sorrowful that she has to choke down a peal of laughter. “Has our course of action changed?”

“Something like that.” Tracer looks to Junkrat, but he’s not there: the doorway is empty save for a remote mine rigged to the inner hinges. She scans the nearby area and comes up empty. No smell of petrol. No tuneless humming. “Where did Junkrat go?”

“I was not aware of his departure,” Zenyatta says.

She moves towards the doorway, past the dead Omnic, past a towering machine which looks to have operated as a crane in a former life. The mine – painted with an incongruously bright smiley face – is the only proof that Junkrat was ever actually here. She pivots: back against the wall, hand at her gun. Her defensive instinct has never really left her. It’s hard to get a proper look at the room from this angle; machines rise above eye level like a miniature skyline, dark and silent in the thin light. She calls out, tentative: “Junkrat?”

Across the room, something clatters to the floor.

She feels a spike of adrenaline deep in her gut, small but substantial. McCree’s warning is at the forefront of her mind. Talon know they’re here, but none of them have a clue where in this cavernous building they might be hiding.

“For fuck’s sake,” she mutters. He can’t possibly have gone far, not with his limited mobility; he gets around fine on that peg of his but he’s not going to be joining the sprint team anytime soon. So how could he have disappeared? Might he have been captured? Could Talon have snuck up on him while she was distracted? The adrenaline in her gut begins to sour as the possibilities reveal themselves.

There’s another, louder crash as something large goes tumbling to the ground. She holds her position, though the urge to run is almost overwhelming. The second sound was closer by, approximately twenty metres to the left, where an ancient furnace stands, soot-blackened and imposing. It could be a deliberate lure, she thinks, drawing both pistols out of their holsters. Her hands are firm, unshaking.

“Zenyatta,” she says, in a low voice. “Cover me.”

She feels the delicious chill of the healing orb as Zenyatta tethers it to her once more. It glows, faint and golden over her shoulder, an almost comforting presence. She’s fast, she reminds herself, sidestepping slowly towards the source of the noise; she can outrun anything that comes at her. There’s nothing to be afraid of. McCree’s voice replays somewhere in the depths of her mind: _retreat at the first sign of trouble._ Well, she can’t, can she? Not when one of her team has mysteriously disappeared.

A long, drawn-out creak emanates from the aisle ahead.

“I know there’s someone there,” Tracer says, just loud and commanding enough to keep the tremble from her voice. She pushes forward, approaching the source of the sound; step by single step, her feet light on the tiles. Her muscles are taut as piano strings. “I’m giving you five seconds to come out with your hands up. I have backup, and more on the way.”

Nothing. Silence. She barely dares to breathe; the steady thrum of her pulse is loud in her ears. “Listen,” she says. “You’re badly outnumbered, mate, so why don’t you just-”

The furnace door is flung violently open. It falls off its hinges, crashing to the floor. Tracer cries out in spite of herself, aiming a shaky pistol at the gaping black hole inside the furnace; she fights the urge to rewind, returning to the relative security of twenty metres away. A voice echoes off the furnace walls, unintelligible; something inside scrabbles, clanks, emerges like a burrowing beast into the dim light of the factory.

“Just what?” Junkrat says.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” The breath leaves Tracer’s lungs in a single shuddering exhalation. Her muscles slacken as Junkrat crawls up and out, blue-black with a fresh coating of soot; his teeth are bared in a wide, almost savage grin. He lands awkwardly, swaying as he rights himself. A shower of soot rains down like grey snowfall. “What the fuck are you playing at, you absolute prat?”

His hair sparks spontaneously. His grin fades, eyes narrowing in confusion. “What’s got up your nose?”

Tracer shoves her guns back into their holsters. It takes three increasingly frustrated attempts before they slide home. “You were supposed to be setting up defences!”

“I did. All sorted. Then I saw you were communing with the dead and all that, so I thought, give you some space, you know? Check out some of this scrap. Hey, you won’t believe what I found in there…”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “I cannot adequately express how little of a shit I give. I said no looting and you completely disregarded me. You ran off without warning for what? So you could steal stuff? What is wrong with you, Junkrat?”

“Who, _me?_ ” He’s not even feigning ignorance, she realises, with rising anger. He genuinely cannot understand why she’s pissed. Why disobeying orders might be considered a bad thing. “This stuff’s derelict! You can hardly call that _stealing_. More like repurposing.”

“That’s not the point and you-”

Something very hot and very close whizzes past Tracer’s face, barely grazing her cheek. She blips instinctively to the side just as a bullet hits the furnace with a dull thud. She reappears next to Junkrat, mouth still agape from scolding him. “Get _down_ ,” she hisses, shoving him with the heels of her palms. He complies. “Back against the machinery,” she says, pressing her own spine hard against the side of the conveyor. She hopes Zenyatta has the good sense to make himself scarce.

He stares at her with wide eyes; she’s close enough to see the pink veins webbing the whites, his soot-caked eyelashes. Herself, crouched and frowning, reflected in the wide black disc of his pupils. “Your face,” he says, pointing to his own cheek.

She reaches up. The flesh stings; she draws her hand sharply back. There is blood on her fingertips, bright and glistening.

“That a sniper?” For the first time, he sounds genuinely afraid.

“Yes,” she says. She wipes her fingers clean on her leggings, leaving blunt crimson streaks. “A very good sniper, so keep your bloody head down.”

“Can’t be that good,” he mutters, drawing his knees to his chest. He’s not very good at making himself small; he’s too long in the limbs, too laden with ludicrous equipment. His hair flickers silently. “Missed a clean headshot.”

Tracer rests the back of her skull against the conveyor. Warm blood trickles down her cheek. She wonders if it’ll scar. Wouldn’t that be appropriate? “Believe me, Junkrat. If she’d intended to kill me, my skull would be pulp already.”

“Weren’t the other lot supposed to be taking care of this?”

“The plan changed,” Tracer says, a little sharply. “Which you would have known if you hadn’t gone off looting.” She switches her communicator to speaker, cups a palm over her mouth. “McCree,” she whispers. “Mercy. Can you hear me?”

The catwalk rattles overhead. A fine shower of dust rains down, hissing as it hits the tiles. Her heart jackhammers off her sternum; she dimly recognises that it’s only partly in fear. “McCree. . _Jesse_. Are you even there? Do you copy?”

“It’s no good.” A voice. A horribly familiar voice; elegant vowels and stone cold inflection, diction crisp as January frost. Everything about her is precise, perfect. It always was. Even _before_. “My colleague has hacked your communications network. Child’s play, she tells me.”

Junkrat tilts his head up. His throat bobs as he swallows; the jut of his jaw is knife-sharp. “She up there, this shit-hot sniper of yours? Must be fuckin’ suicidal.”

“I know you’re there, Lena.” Not even taunting. Just flat, matter-of-fact. Slow, steady footsteps echo off the catwalk, unhurried. “And you _know_ I can see you. Why don’t you come out? My colleague would love to talk with you.”

“Why don’t you _fuck off?_ ” Tracer mutters. The floor is cold and hard beneath her, numbing her thighs. She’s itching to move now; she knows she’s fast enough to evade Amelie’s shots. She’s done it before, over and over; her abilities have saved her life several times already. But Junkrat is here, and Zenyatta out there somewhere – intact, she hopes, though she can neither see nor hear him. She can’t abandon them. They don’t know how Amelie operates.

“Shit,” Junkrat says, through gritted teeth. “She’s right above us.”

“Don’t look,” Tracer says.   

“Eh? Why not?” She hears him shifting; the clatter of his weaponry is a dead giveaway to their position, but what does it matter? If she knows where they are, they’re probably screwed anyway. “Hang on. Do they have _two_ snipers?”

“What?” Against her better instinct, she looks up. The catwalk is directly above their current position, vertiginously high and swaying with every step Amelie takes. And he’s right: there are two of them up there. It’s impossible to tell from this vantage point – neck craned almost ninety degrees backwards, squinting through tinted lenses – but Tracer is almost certain that the second sniper is a woman as well.

Junkrat lets out a yelp of surprise.

She turns, whipcrack fast, pistols drawn and raised high; past Junkrat, trained between the eyes of the woman who has just materialised behind them. She seems utterly indifferent to Tracer’s threat; she doesn’t even bother raising her own gun. She’s smug, beautiful; her hair and clothes are the unapologetic neon hue of one who is confident beyond doubt that she’ll never get caught.

Junkrat tips her a cheerful salute. “G’day love.”

Tracer just about has time to register the look she gives him – incomprehension, giving sudden way to narrow-eyed recognition – before Junkrat detonates the mine at her feet with a deafening boom. The neon woman is thrown into the air; she disappears in a burst of purplish light before she hits the ground. Tracer and Junkrat are up and running before the smoke clears; she, blipping in and out of the rudimentary aisles, forming a blurry distraction, not daring to look up lest she meet Amelie’s mortuary gaze. “Zenyatta!” she yells; she blips left, right, and still she can’t see him anywhere. The healing orb is conspicuously absent. “Get out of here!”

A bullet pings off the scrap just shy of her shoulder. She rewinds, feels her body pulled violently backward: the impossible arch of her spine, the sensation of being lifted, not just up but _out_ , piercing the fabric of reality with almost insulting ease. And then she’s back, ducking behind a half-collapsed crane, catching her breath as feet pound the catwalk overhead. Where the fuck is Zenyatta? What is Junkrat doing? She can’t hear anything exploding. Isn’t that what he _does_?

“Oi!”

Junkrat is crouched a few metres away, holding a large pile of assorted scrap in his arms. Her disbelief lasts only a second before giving way completely to anger: even in mortal danger, this fucking _idiot_ still manages to put his insane scrap-hoarding habit before the safety of his comrades.

“Put that fucking thing _down_ ,” she snaps, still breathless. Something trickles down her face; sweat or blood, she’s not sure. “I don’t care how valuable you think it is.”

He raises a hand in protest. “No, you don’t understand-”

“ _Drop it_ , Junkrat. I’m deadly fucking seri-” A sudden pain blossoms between her shoulder blades, quick and sharp as a hornet’s sting. She stiffens, reaches up; the tips of her fingers brush the quill of the tranq dart just as her limbs slacken, sending her tumbling onto her face. She doesn’t even feel the impact. The world is suddenly horribly hazy, a drunken blur; Junkrat’s hand is on her shoulder, grabbing hold of her collar, and suddenly she’s moving, sliding backwards across the floor. Somewhere in the far distance there’s the sound of gunfire: not a rifle, but the dry, echoing crack of a revolver. _Jesse’s here_ , she thinks. It takes a long time for the thought to form, to cross her mind, each syllable interminably drawn out: _Oh. Thank god._

The world is turning grey at the edges. Her body is useless flesh, heavy bone. Her mouth hangs open; she can taste blood, petrol. Her eyes droop. High above on the catwalk, a woman is leaning over. Dark skin. A flash of ash white hair. She meets Tracer’s gaze just as her eyes slip shut. The last thing Tracer sees, before the sedative finally takes hold, is the woman’s mouth forming silent, faraway words. It looks very much as if she’s saying sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I can't live up to my own promises so I shall promise nothing except that there will be another chapter, and possibly one after that as well. Thank you, lovely person, for reading this monstrous chapter. I hope very much that it entertained and/or delighted you.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has supported this fic so far, your kindness and loveliness are gifts I cannot adequately repay.
> 
> (And as always, thank you Em, for motivating me with your supportive words & excellent writing sprints.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> took a while, innit? Never mind. Back to the adventures of speedy & smelly.

*

The voice in his head is loud and insistent, a stream of panicked chatter: _sniper there’s a bloody sniper keep your head down don’t want to lose a chunk of your fuckin skull do you course you don’t so get the fuck down…_

He can’t, though. He can’t get the fuck down, though it’s undoubtedly an excellent idea, because he’s got a dead bot cradled in the crook of one arm, and Tracer’s collar seized between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. He is a donkey laden with non-functioning individuals; he’s not even a particularly quick donkey, and all the extra weight is doing nothing to help his balance, precarious as it already is. Stupid fucking leg. Hardly the Ferrari of the prosthetic leg world – not like that bloke, whathisname, the singer with the rollerskate legs. Real pretty fella. Shame about the music…

_Concentrate, rat!_

Hog’s voice. Weird, how it infiltrates his inner monologue; weirder still how normal it feels now. It works, though: he slips beneath the scant shelter of a precariously angled crane, pulling Tracer so she’s resting at the foot of the device. From this angle he can still see the snipers – twin shapes on the periphery of his vision – but he knows they can’t see him. Always did have good spatial awareness. Excellent instinct. Well, you’ve got to stay alive somehow. He realises, as he hunkers down, catching his breath, that he’s still holding the bot. Can’t very well leave him; Tracer would go berko and fuck knows he’s already in the shit with her as it is. So, now what? It’s only a matter of time before the snipers head in their direction and then they will really be fucked.

So.

He grabs the communicator from Tracer’s ear, jams it into his own. There’s no sound. He realises he’s got no idea how to use it. “Junkrat here,” he says, voice low; he cranes his neck, feels the muscles tug as he tracks the path of the snipers. “Er…dunno if you can hear me but it’s all gone a bit wrong down here. Might need to blow some stuff up. Fair warning.” He pauses. “And er. Two men down. I mean. A woman and a bot. Both down. Requesting backup.” He’s pleased with this last addition. It sounds professional, and because it would be quite nice if someone else could carry the floating tin-can for a bit.

There’s no immediate reply. They probably didn’t even hear him. Well, Tracer did say the communicators were crap. He hoists the grenade launcher up onto his shoulder. The snipers are too far away to hit with any accuracy, so that’s a no-go, but as he scans the catwalk he realises that there’s a vital support strut a little distance overhead. He performs the necessary mental calculations; he lacks the book-smarts to explain them properly, but he’s got all kinds of diagrams in his head. He draws lines, connects dots; he squints one eye shut so that the other eye – the _good_ eye, the one he aims with – can properly judge the distance.

Looks good, he thinks, settling the launcher in place. Flicking the safety off. Roadhog’s suggested modification: accidental grenades never did anyone any good, he says, and Junkrat’s had experiences that suggest he’s dead wrong on this but it’s always better to appease the big guy. He takes aim; the squiggles in his head all fall into place, and yes, this is a good shot, this is a _great_ shot, except that he hasn’t actually taken the shot and shit, the snipers are on the move, they’re heading his way. Too late to change the plan now. He fires – once, twice, three times, a volley of grenades arcing high. There’s a tinny clatter as they bounce onto the catwalk. The snipers turn, curious but not visibly alarmed, and for a long moment nothing at all happens.

And then several things happen all at once.

The first thing is that McCree and his crew burst in through the left-hand corridor, red-faced and panting – they must have run at a hell of a speed to have traversed the length of the building so quickly. He’s barely waved a cheerful greeting before the grenades overhead finally explode. An entire segment of catwalk peels away from the ceiling. There’s just enough time to see the sniper duo swing to safety overhead like the world’s most dangerous acrobats before the walkway plummets to the ground.

Dust plumes from the impact site in a miniature mushroom cloud. A thin scattering of rubble showers down. It’s like the cave all over again, only more explodey. He’s aware of Roadhog’s hand engulfing his bicep. “Hold up, hold up!” he warns. It buys him just enough time to gather up Tracer’s slack limbs and sling them over his shoulder. She’s barely secured when Roadhog yanks sharply, pulling him backwards.

“Sniper,” he says, gruff.

“I know,” Junkrat replies. “I saw ‘em. What, you think I blew the ceiling off for fun? Oi, don’t forget the bot.”

“Cowboy’s on it.” He jerks a thick thumb over his shoulder. McCree’s got the bot over his own shoulder, his gun drawn and ready in the other hand. “Stupid. Could’ve got yourself killed.”

“Didn’t though, did I?” Roadhog half-drags him towards the left-hand corridor, slow and lumbering but steady, a large human shield should the snipers resurface. McCree is close behind them; Mercy is at the rear, hand at her holster as she scans the wreckage for signs of movement. Something prickles in the back of his brain as they approach the doorway; a vague warning, like a red flashing light seen through thick fog. Something about the door. What could be wrong about a door? How would he even know, unless-

“The bomb!” He grinds his heel into the concrete, almost pulling Roadhog to a halt. “I rigged the corridor! You have to let me…”

Roadhog reaches into his pocket. The mine looks very small and very harmless surrounded by the meat of his palm. The blinking red light has been deactivated. He can’t see Hog’s eyes, but he knows they’re smiling.

The dragging recommences. “Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, shifting Tracer’s dead weight closer to his neck. Already dislocated his shoulder enough times. “’Cos you know me so bloody well, don’t you?”

*

It’s a long slog back to the ship.

Tracer is a slight little thing, but Junkrat’s beginning to think her bones must be made of lead. It’s like lugging a prize scrap haul except you can’t make weapons out of bits of people.

( _Actually_ , his mind pipes up, _there was that bloke outside of Darwin, the one who’d turned his own shinbone into a cudgel, remember? All but caved your skull in? Your fault, to be fair, you did nick one of his chickens…)_

He spots McCree in his peripheral vision. The man’s cape billows on what must surely be an imaginary breeze, because there’s no wind to be had for miles around. He approaches Junkrat without so much as a warning; his muscles tense instinctively, preparing for flight, but there’s no need. McCree is only interested in Tracer.

“She’s not dead,” Junkrat blurts, defensive. His grip tightens. He dimly recognises this as stupid; it’s not like her own teammate is out to harm her. Still. Difficult to trust these people. They _did_ lock him in a tiny room. “I checked her pulse. Good and strong. No blood, neither. Sniper must’ve been a real crappy shot.”

“It wasn’t a bullet.” McCree reaches out. The pads of his fingers are nicotine-yellow; they slip beneath the crease of Junkrat’s elbow - a moment of unwelcome contact - and pluck something long and thin from the back of Tracer’s neck. He lifts it up, holds it to the light; there’s the momentary glimmer of a wickedly sharp needle. “Thought so,” he says.

Junkrat’s heart plummets like a stone. Nothing good ever came from a dart gun. “Poison?”

“Tranquiliser,” McCree says, giving him a curious look. “Probably a low dose. She’ll be back on her feet in an hour or so. And…huh.” He squints at the side of the dart. “Looks like our sniper was sending us a message. Don’t suppose you can read Arabic?”

Junkrat shrugs. “I can swear in Samoan.”

McCree doesn’t dignify that with a response “The hell happened in there, anyhow? How’d you come to be the last man standing?”

A host of blithe responses jostle for position at the tip of his tongue. He swallows them all down; this McCree guy looks like serious business. It’s the hat. Nobody wears a hat like that if they’re not tough as nails. “Half of it was my fuck-up,” Junkrat says. “Other half was yours. You _could_ argue that my fuckup wouldn’t have mattered if you lot hadn’t fucked up first, but…”

“We got the wrong information,” McCree says. There’s a hint of warning in his voice, and Junkrat clamps his teeth sharp around his tongue. Roadhog’s shadow looms over them both, a reminder of his slow but almost omniscient presence just yards away. It’s reassuring, but McCree looks fast, alert; Junkrat doesn’t fancy Roadhog’s chances in a one-on-one. “Still doesn’t explain how your whole team went down around you. I’m gonna remind you at this point that the only reason you’re even here is because Lena…because Tracer spoke up for you. Doesn’t speak well of you that you failed to protect her.”

“Seems to me she doesn’t need much protecting,” Junkrat says.

“Most of the time, she doesn’t. She’s a smart kid. Plenty of common sense. That makes me doubly curious as to how she ended up shot.”

The ship glimmers brilliantly in the hot sun, almost blinding. Junkrat squeezes his eyes shut, watches neon specks float and dance in the black space behind his eyelids. Reminds him of Oz; fireflies dancing in swarms in the blue mountains. He wonders if he’ll ever get back there. Whether he even wants to. There’s so much more for them out here, in the world. Straya’s a big place but most of it’s been burnt down to nothing – desert and wasteland and irradiated waterways that’d kill a man sooner than quench his thirst. No opportunities left there. Not unless you’ve got the cash. And well, they’ve sort of got the cash now, but…

“Junkrat?”

“Mm?” He opens his eyes. Somehow, he’s made it back to the ship. McCree has been waiting patiently all this time; he can see in the other man’s eyes that there’s a limit to his tolerance, and Junkrat is repeatedly pushing at that boundary. “Oh. I mean, were you expecting me to present my case or something? Mate, I messed up, that’s all. Got my eyes set on some good scrap and forgot what I was meant to be doing. Happens to me sometimes. Bit like a magpie, me. See something valuable-looking, my mind wanders. Didn’t mean harm by it.”

McCree looks faintly appalled. “You ran off and left her?”

Oh, but that needles him. He’s a lot of things, Junkrat, but he’s not a deserter. Loyalty’s always been viable currency, and a smart survival strategy to boot. He’s not _stupid_. “She was with the bot,” he says, gesturing to the ship, where Mercy is loading the tincan onto a gurney. Might as well shove him in a box for all he’ll remember, Junkrat thinks, but he keeps that to himself. “I swear, McCree. None of us knew anything was out of sorts. Far as I can tell, you called right afterwards. My mistake, yeah? I’m not like to repeat it.”

“You assume you’ll have the opportunity to.” McCree holds out his arms. “Give her to me.”

A sudden possessiveness sweeps over him then. He looks at McCree’s open arms  - the solid muscle of him, brick-wall broad, those dark, grave eyes, the firm line of his mouth, a man who is not even in the general vicinity of fucking around. He should be handing her straight over. He should be _glad_ to, because the dead weight of her is ridiculous and his shoulder is about ten minutes from popping right out of its socket again. And who the hell is she to him anyway? Except…well, she stood up for him, didn’t she? She trusted him. Had no reason to, but she did. Back in Junkertown that kind of thing would make you as good as family.

Still, he thinks, as he gently deposits her in McCree’s arms. This is her family: the cowboy and the doctor, the big monkey bloke. That funny ninja robot fella. She might’ve stood up for him and Hog, but she’s not one of them. They’re mercenaries, aren’t they? Hardly part of the team. Nah, better for everyone to keep that line drawn. He steps back, lets McCree do the heavy lifting onto the ship. She looks so small, all of a sudden; the last dregs of possessiveness are washed away by guilt. Some teammate he turned out to be.

Roadhog’s hand is a reassuring weight between his shoulder blades. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to; over the years he’s come to understand the way Roadhog communicates – with posture, with gestures, with sparse and careful physical contact. This, he interprets, is a gesture of consolation. _She’s still alive. You’ll do better next time._

“Ahh, bloody hell,” Junkrat mutters.

*

She comes to in a white room filled with white lights. There’s a moment of deep-seated alarm as she realises that this is what the afterlife is supposed to look like. Then she remembers that she doesn’t believe in an afterlife, and besides, if heaven was real surely it wouldn’t smell quite so much like the aftermath of a tyre-yard inferno.

Sleepy eyes blink. The world comes back into focus. From her left, a familiar voice: “Lazy bugger, ain’t you?”

She turns her head. He’s slouched in a chair beside the bed, hair flickering, holding a well-thumbed paperback in both hands. “Still haven’t bathed, I notice,” she replies. Her voice sounds thick, barely like herself at all.

Junkrat’s face splits into a grin. “No time, no time,” he says, waving the book as if for punctuation. “Been at your beck and call since we got back. Your own personal nurse, how’s that for service? Bet you don’t get that on your bloody NHS.”

“Gibraltar’s been independent for forty years. Get with the times.” She rubs at her eyes with the heel of her palm. She can tell she’s back at the Watchpoint, though she can’t quite remember how she got here. She runs a mental inventory of all her vital parts; she’s reassured to note that she’s entirely intact. She’s not even that sore. “When did we get back?”

“About an hour ago. You were out a lot longer than they expected. Cowboy was worried, but the angel of death said you just needed to sleep it off. Thought I’d stay with you, seeing as how it was sort of my fault you got poked in the first place.”

“Poked?”

“Yeah. Sleep dart. Special delivery.” He mimes a blowpipe, and she fights back a giggle. It’s not fair to laugh. If his cobbled-together weaponry is anything to go by, it’s safe to assume that the tools of war are a little more basic where he comes from. “And here’s some gossip for you. That sniper? She used to be one of yous.”

The urge to correct his grammar is quickly consumed by the realisation that he isn’t talking about Amelie. Tranquilisers aren’t her style; poison, yes, because pain is infinitely more fascinating to her than unconsciousness. There’s only one other person he could be referring to.

“Ana Amari,” she says. She’s upright now; her muscles are communicating fully with her brain, and she’s almost embarrassed that she’s in the infirmary at all. She feels perfectly fine. “Blimey. She’s kind of a legend. She’s from the golden era of Overwatch, you know, back when we were big heroes? We thought she was dead for years.”

“Yeah, well apparently she’s alive and well and shooting darts at people.” He drops the book into his lap. “I er, made a bit of a mess back there, didn’t I? With the scrap and all that?”

She’d been angry at him. She remembers that part clearly enough. But he looks genuinely contrite; the slope of his shoulders and the slight bowing of his head remind her of a scolded dog. He’s probably had an earful from Mercy. “It was seriously irresponsible of you. You’re part of a team now, Junkrat. You can’t just go gallivanting whenever something shiny catches your eye. A team only works if everyone pulls their weight. That means we have to be able to rely on you.”

“Never been part of a team before,” he says, thoughtful. “Was always just me until Roadie came along. Feels a bit weird, people relying on me. Not sure I like it all that much.” He pauses, worrying at his lip with his teeth. “Didn’t mean for you to get hurt though.”

She sighs. “I’m not hurt,” she says, sliding out of the bed as though to prove it. She regrets it immediately. Her feet are numb and useless; she falls onto her backside with a heavy thump. His wide, startled eyes crease with sudden laughter; a high, whooping cackle like a hyena, or an excitable magpie. “You know, I don’t _have_ to forgive you,” she mutters. She bunches both fists into the bedclothes as she pulls herself halfway back up, legs wobbling, struggling to the sound of Junkrat’s barely-stifled laughter; she must look like a newborn calf taking its first steps.

It’s at this inopportune moment that Mercy appears. She’s dressed down in a slouchy jumper and jeans, but her hair is immaculate and there’s a flush about her cheeks which suggests she may recently have been in the company of a certain unkempt American. She pauses in the doorway, apparently caught between her instinctive urge to help Tracer up and the more pressing need to suppress her own laughter.

“Take a bloody picture,” Tracer says, irritable. She presses her face against the mattress. God, isn’t this just perfect? “You can send it to all your mates. ‘A rare shot of Lena’s arse in the wild’.”

She feels Mercy’s hands gentle against her shoulders, taking her weight as she helps her to stand; she’s stronger than she looks. “Residual numbness is not uncommon,” she says. The smile is still evident in her voice, but at least Junkrat has stopped laughing. “You’ll feel better once the blood gets flowing again. There, isn’t that an improvement?” She steps away, gently releasing Tracer’s weight; she wobbles, but stands firm.

“Is Zenyatta okay?” Tracer asks.

“Reinhardt’s taking a look at him now. He’s certain the damage is repairable. Omnics are quite tough, and although he looks non-functional Reinhardt assures me that Zenyatta is still very much alive in there.”

There’s a notable lack of comeback from Junkrat’s direction. Tracer peers over her shoulder. He’s pretending to study the book in his hands, although he’s holding it upside down and his gaze is clearly fixed on the opposite wall. She wonders if he’s a little afraid of Mercy.

As it turns out, he has a good reason to be.

“I came down here because Winston asked me to fetch you both.” Her good mood has vanished, and this perturbs Tracer a little; this sudden change doesn’t bode well at all. “Some new information has come to light and…well, perhaps we ought to discuss this upstairs, with the rest of the team.”

“Angela?” Tracer straightens up, turns to face them both. Junkrat is regarding Mercy with open curiosity now, the book forgotten. From her new vantage point Tracer can see what he’s been reading: it’s one of Mercy’s pulp romance novels, complete with a shirtless, generically handsome Mediterranean man on the cover. “Is everything okay?”

Mercy smiles. There’s no warmth in it. “Yes, Lena,” she says, in her best physician’s voice. “It will be.”

*

Mercy remains tight-lipped on the walk up, speaking only to enquire as to Tracer’s mobility and comfort. She doesn’t tell Mercy that she’d feel a great deal more comfortable if only she’d explain why the pair of them are being marched silently upstairs, as though they’re about to face an inquisition of some kind. She racks her brain for the possibilities and comes up empty: she knows she hasn’t done anything wrong, and Junkrat’s already had his dressing down. So what is it? What could be so wrong?

Winston and McCree stop talking as they enter the control room. A bead of cold sweat forms at the base of Tracer’s neck. Roadhog is sat in one corner. He’s not restrained and doesn’t look sedated, which reassures her a little. “Where are Reinhardt and Genji?” she asks, taking a seat beside McCree.

“In a call with Torb,” McCree replies. He’s got his feet up on the comms desk, slouching in his chair, like he’d rather be anywhere else than here. “They’re working on fixing up Zenyatta. Genji doesn’t trust Rein not to screw it up, though he’s too damn polite to say it out loud.” He looks over to Junkrat, who is yet to take a seat. “You,” he says, without smiling, “are a pretty famous man.”

“I believe that should be ‘infamous’,” Winston says.

Junkrat scowls down at his foot. “Dunno what you’re talking about, mate. I’m just a long streak of piss from Junkertown. Nothing special about me.”

“Aw, come now, no need to be humble. You’re a star, ain’t you? Been on TV and everything.” Even Tracer can’t tell if there’s humour in McCree’s tone or not. He shuffles upright, pulls his long legs down from the comms desk; when he leans forward, hands clasped in his lap, Tracer’s gut suddenly constricts. “I hear you’re pretty in demand right now.”

“Enough now, Jesse,” Mercy admonishes, but gently. “Be serious.”

Junkrat glances over at Tracer. If he’s concerned, it doesn’t show.

“We’ve had communication from a Talon agent,” Winston says, keying something in to the holo on his wrist. A small screen pops up. “Less than thirty minutes after your flight landed. The message was quite specific.” He clears his throat, adjusting his glasses. “‘Jamison Fawkes has something that belongs to us. Give him to us and we will consider releasing Amari. If you do not comply we will take him by force.’”

“None of us had a clue who Jamison Fawkes was, so I did a little research. And look what I found.” It’s McCree’s turn to present to the audience. He commandeers the main screen, which fills the entire far wall of the control room. There comes an eardrum-bursting blast of bombastic theme music; an American crime show, by the looks of things, with what Tracer judges to be a typically garish intro – dynamite and explosions and a cringeworthy pun for a title. She’s about to ask just what the point of all this is when the screen cuts to a shot of an exploding London bus. The shot pans to a frustrated-looking copper leaning out of a squad car, firing ineffectual bullets at-

“Oh bollocks,” Tracer mutters.

It’s Junkrat. And there’s Roadhog beside him, astride a motorcycle-sidecar combination so ludicrously in-your-face that it could only be a custom job. The pair of them are festooned in glimmering gold, and as the camera slowly zooms in she realises exactly what Junkrat is holding in his hand. She looks over at him, outraged, but he doesn’t notice; he’s staring up at the screen in awe, and it occurs to him that it’s probably the first time he’s ever seen this broadcast. It’s impossible to gauge Roadhog’s reaction, but his face is turned up towards the screen too, and his upright posture suggests he’s paying close attention. Jamison Fawkes, she thinks, staring up at his gurning mugshot. She’s almost surprised to discover he has a real name, like an ordinary person.

The clip comes to an abrupt end. An audience of expectant eyes turn suddenly to Junkrat.

“Oi Roadie,” he says, jabbing a thumb towards the screen. “Can you believe that bollocks? Trying to make us look bad. We ought to bomb their bloody studio, teach ‘em a lesson.”

The knot in Tracers gut loosens a little. She lets out a small, relieved sigh. “So…you didn’t steal the crown jewels after all?”

“Mm? Oh yeah, we did that. I mean, we gave ‘em back. Well, we were _made_ to give ‘em back. No, I meant in the arcade. Those cuddly onion things. Roadie won them all fair and square. Cost a bloody fortune, but he likes cute stuff, and it keeps him happy, so who am I to argue? We didn’t nick a thing. That’s slander.”

“I think you may be missing the point,” Mercy says, quite politely.  

“Here’s the situation.” Winston gets to his feet. It’s easy to forget quite how tall he is sometimes; he’s almost always behind a desk or a workbench of some sort, shoulders hunched in concentration, so when he finally does draw himself up to his full imposing stature it’s a stark reminder that he is a creature that could feasibly take your head off with a single blow. “We’re being offered a chance to trade in one individual for another, whom I believe we’ll all agree is of immense value to us, professionally and personally. The individual we’re being asked to trade is a known felon, travelling with a suspected murderer…”

Roadhog makes a dismissive sound, but offers no further objection.

“…and is purportedly in possession of something important to Talon. I believe the most pressing question is – what exactly is it that Talon want so badly?”

“I don’t have a clue, honest,” Junkrat splutters, feigning a casual ignorance that does nothing to cover up his obvious alarm. His eyes narrow to slits, pupils bouncing like pinballs as he scans the room for escape routes.

“You can’t seriously be thinking of selling him out,” Tracer demands, indignant.

Mercy puts a hand on her shoulder, squeezes gently. “Just listen, Lena,” she says, entirely without spite; she settles back down, cheeks hot with her own outrage. She’s cross, and when she’s cross her mouth runs a mile ahead of her brain. It’s not that she’s been labouring under the illusion that Junkrat is a great guy; he’s a jackal with shoes on, a wheedler and a crook and a shameless opportunist. But she had at least thought him largely harmless, a small-time con man without much clout, a half-baked criminal full of half-baked schemes. That he’s so notorious and never once thought to share that with her feels almost like a betrayal. Almost.

“I wasn’t lying when I said you were famous.” McCree leans back in his seat, pillowing his hands behind his head. The features of his face are half lost in the shadow of his ever-present hat; he might look sinister, except that Tracer has sat through enough old Westerns in her time to know a cowboy cliché when she sees one. “See, it’s real easy to dig for information these days. You don’t even have to dig far to find something of value. And you, well, you’re a pretty distinctive guy with a pretty distinctive name. You go to the right sources, there’s a ton of stories about you. Some of it’s obvious bullshit, but some of it…” He pauses. It’s for dramatic effect, and it drives Tracer nuts most of the time, but it’s obviously working because sweat has begun to bead on Junkrat’s brow. “We know you found something in the ruins of the Alice Springs Omnium. And we know people have been trying to kill you for it. That list now includes Talon. And let me tell you this: they are a hell of a lot more organised and dangerous than any of the pisspot organisations and mercenaries you’ve dodged up until now. They _will_ find you, eventually, and they will think nothing of killing you when they do.”

Despite his rising panic, Junkrat bristles. “That a threat?”

“No,” McCree says. “It’s a promise.”

There’s a long, drawn out creak as Roadhog shifts in his chair and, for the first time, looks directly at Junkrat. “Tell them, Jamie,” he says, very quietly.

Junkrat sighs. It’s not a theatrical, exaggerated sigh but a resigned one, like he’s been waiting for this day. Like he’d hoped, somehow, that he might have gone down in a blaze of glory instead of sat sweating in a wonky desk chair, surrounded by polite, civilised people entreating that he please hand the damn thing over. “You know what’s funny,” he says, as he begins the rigmarole of detaching his prosthetic leg. “I don’t even know what the stupid thing does. Never could decode it. Computers ain’t my thing. Took it to a friend up near Cairns after I found it. Good bloke, him. Grew up in the same orphanage. We were like brothers back then. Used to beat the snot out of me at mealtimes so I’d give him my pudding.” He talks as he works, unscrewing the components with a practised hand. “Next thing I know, there’s a bloody big machete at my throat and he’s telling me I can leave of my own accord, or I can leave in a black bag, but either way I can kiss goodbye to the thingo I found.” The prosthetic slips free, revealing the gnarled, bandaged stub of his femur. He digs long fingers into the empty socket, lifting up a layer of what looks like calfskin to reveal a compartment beneath. He looks almost wistful as he plucks the object from its hiding place, holding it up to the light. It’s a data chip, glowing a faint blue-green; old fashioned, from long before the war, but still readable. “I was taller than him by then,” Junkrat says, smiling, like it’s a fond memory and not one involving a machete to the throat. “Didn’t take much to put him on the ground. Broke his arm too. Always did feel bad about that. Still, got a free machete out of it, so, you know. Swings and roundabouts.”

“Did he say what was on there?” Tracer asks.

“Yeah,” Junkrat says. The chip nestles in the palm of his prosthetic hand. It looks tiny, worthless. “He said it was some kind of computer code. Something really important, by the sound of it. He called it a ‘God program’.”

A sudden deathly hush falls across the control room. Winston and McCree turn to face each other. Tracer sits upright, staring wordlessly at Junkrat. Even Mercy is uncharacteristically agog. The God program. It can’t possibly be true, and yet it’s the only thing that makes sense, the only reason why a host of faceless organisations and bounty hunters and assassins would want to chase a man like Junkrat across the globe. And now Talon, who Tracer knows do not deign to deal with the small stuff. _Oh_ , she thinks, a little helplessly. _You are in so, so much trouble. You are in completely over your head and you have no idea._

“What?” Junkrat looks around, wide-eyed and confused. “Was it something I said?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much to the word sprint crew Em n Shoi who both have super cool new fics up that you absolutely should read (Take your pick: [Hanzo and Mercy playing sexy mindgames with one another](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9380129), or [the dark and fascinating tale of Jesse McCree and one Gabriel Reyes)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9496943)
> 
> and thanks so much to you for waiting patiently. We are coming to the last chapter now. I hope you've enjoyed the story so far!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a Junker pyromaniac and a time-displaced wannabe cockney walk into a bar. And by 'bar', I mean 'cave in the middle of nowhere, Tunisia'.
> 
> a.k.a 'the last chapter'

On the morning of the handover, Junkrat goes missing.

‘Missing’, Tracer thinks, is overstating it somewhat; he can’t have gone far, because Roadhog is still at the Watchpoint, and so is most of Junkrat’s gear. Since being reunited with his scrapheap arsenal he’s barely let any of it out of his sight. He ate dinner last night with his grenade launcher strapped to his back, insistent that it was easier for him to digest food when properly armed. She’s a little concerned to note that the only thing obviously missing from his personal stash is the beartrap. She fires off a truncated message to her comrades – _rogue beartrap alert, watch your step –_ and sets out in search of Junkrat.

The truth is he’s the last person she wants to speak to right now. She can’t quite understand why she’s taken the revelation of his criminal activities so personally. It’s not like he ever feigned being a decent human being; it’s not like she’d ever believed he might be. Part of her is hurt that he never saw fit to tell her about his notoriety; a smaller, more insistent part of her is hurt that he clearly never trusted her enough to do so.

Still. The show must go on.

Roadhog is tight-lipped on Junkrat’s possible whereabouts, maintaining a careful veneer of plausible deniability – a shrug of mountainous shoulders, a mumble which might translate to _what makes you think I’d know the kind of stupid shit he gets up to when I’m not around?_ And despite their obvious closeness, she believes him. Of the two, it seems Roadhog is more accustomed to domesticity; in these past few days he has adjusted remarkably well to this new ‘settled’ existence, is visibly less wary of his new neighbours. Where Junkrat starts at every sudden noise, Roadhog maintains an almost bovine sense of calm. As though he – older and perhaps wiser than Junkrat – can remember a time before everything went to shit; a time when life was something a man could live slowly, peaceably. Junkrat lives his life like it’s something stolen, as though every revolution of the clock spent conscious and mobile is a small victory at the expense of something far greater.

None of which is bringing her any closer to actually finding Junkrat.

She pauses. Where would she go if she were a feral, semi-dressed Australian pyromaniac pushing seven feet tall? The answer is obvious. Junkrat wasn’t made to live indoors, and the sunbaked, dusty Gibraltarian rock must be as close to home as he’s likely to find anywhere close by.

It’s not yet summer but the early morning heat is enough to make Tracer long for the crisp air-conditioned climes of the Watchpoint. She shields her eyes with her arm as she scans the horizon, following the cliff edge around the perimeter of the rocky outcrop upon which the Watchpoint is perched. The sea below is restless, boiling against the cliff face. In the shade, it is the chill blue of sapphires; in the sun it is brilliant aquamarine and she remembers in the old days – the _good_ days –when she and Amelie and Angela and Reinhardt would spend long afternoons on the beach. Tracer, safely sequestered in a large patch of shade, gazing shyly at the way Amelie’s long, sea-wet limbs glistened in the sun. It had been different, back then. The world had needed them.

She looks up. High above the Watchpoint, a thin column of black smoke rises into the air, barely a smudge against the wide blue sky. Of course, she thinks, with a heavy sigh; of _course_ he would choose the highest, most inaccessible part of the Watchpoint for his sulking spot. The sun is growing in intensity and it’s a long way to the top. She taps the accelerator, hears the answering whirr as it kicks into life. Thank heavens for temporal dysfunction. In a matter of minutes she’s nearing the top of the cliff; a plume of reddish dust rises in her wake like the aftermath of a minor natural disaster.

And there, precariously close to the cliff edge, is Junkrat. His skin is tarnished gold in the sunlight, and Tracer realises he must have bathed this morning, because his customary patina of grime is visibly absent. Close up, she can detect a faint but detailed network of ancient scars, newer bruises like watercolour tattoos. He’s burning a pile of leaves and torn-up paper with the lens of an old visor, directing the sun’s rays into a single destructive beam.

“I bet you learned to burn stuff before you could even walk,” Tracer says. Hands in her pockets, posture stiff and awkward.

“I wouldn’t know,” Junkrat says, “what with my folks being dead and all that.”

“You’ve got the hump with me, haven’t you?” Irritation prickles at the back of her neck, though she’s known all along that he’d be cross with her. He’s not sullen, exactly, but there is a flatness about his cadence that gives everything away; an entirely normal manner, perhaps, for anyone but Junkrat. “My mum had a phrase for this kind of situation. She used to say ‘you made your bed, now you can lie in it.' Well, you’ve definitely made your bed, so stop sulking.”

“Sulking?” He looks up. Without his soot camouflage he somehow looks both very young and impossibly old; his skin is sun-weathered and scarred, dark beneath the eyes, peppered with freckles across the sharp jut of his nose. She already knows he barely sleeps; she’s heard him wandering the corridors in the night, quietly whistling unfamiliar tunes to himself as he walks. “Who’s sulking? I was having a nice enough time up here all on my Pat Malone. Never asked you to come up, did I? Thought it might be nice to spend my last morning as a living, breathing bloke somewhere pretty. Doing what I love most.”

“What, burning stuff?”

He shrugs. “Everyone’s got to have a hobby.”

She sighs. Folds her legs beneath her, leaving a safe distance between her feet and the miniature bonfire. “You know they’re not really going to sell you out, don’t you?”

“That’s what you say.” He sounds almost flippant, but she can see he’s worried. He’s chewing compulsively on the stub of a fingernail, a rhythmic gnawing like a set of wind-up teeth. “This Ana lady. She’s a big deal for you lot, right? A ‘protect at all costs’ kind of big deal? Yeah. You say they’re not going to sell me out, but the minute this Talon lot make life difficult for them, they’ll hand-deliver me quick as you like. Anyway…” His eyes narrow; she can’t tell if it’s suspicion or confusion. “Since when was it ‘they’ and not ‘we’?”

“This isn’t my decision,” she says, emphatic. A light breeze stokes the bonfire, sending scraps of burnt paper fluttering like tiny black butterflies. “Any other time, it would always be ‘we’. But this time…well, it’s complicated, isn’t it? They put me in charge of watching you, and now things are tricky because I know who you are, but they don’t.” It’s suspicion, she realises, watching the way his shoulders stiffen; the fight-or-flight response, ready to kick in at any moment. Waiting for her to plunge the metaphorical knife into his back. “You saved me back there. You saved Zenyatta too, for all your talk about hating omnics. You could have cut and run, if you’d wanted to, but you didn’t. Maybe I’m a sucker and I’m reading too much into it, but…I think you feel like you belong here, in some way. Maybe not with _them_ , so much, but…me and you, I think we could be friends, if we wanted.”

His muscles relax, just a little bit. “Assumed we _were_ friends,” he mumbles, looking down at the goggles hanging limp from his mechanical hand. Then, quietly: “How’s the tin can doing?”

“Zenyatta? He’s back online and functioning well enough to wind Genji up. He’s going to be fine.”

“Right. Well. Er.” He extricates his finger from between his teeth. There’s a rim of red, angry skin around the nail. For the first time, she realises his nails are coated in chipped black polish. It’s a strange detail; he hardly strikes her as someone who takes pride in his appearance, or someone who’d have time for fripperies like nail polish. “Glad it’s um. Glad he’s okay.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” she says, solemn.

He raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you think I deserve it? Nicking your crown jewels and all that?”

Tracer sighs. “Remember when I told you we were outlaws? I wasn’t joking. We’re operating illegally here. Everything we do is illegitimate, at least in the eyes of the law. Every building we destroy, every vehicle we blow up. Every life we take.” She pauses. Swallows. She never likes to acknowledge this part; that Overwatch, directly or otherwise, have taken lives. Continue to take lives, though she believes with every atom of her being that they are doing it for the right reason. That the greater good presides. “And I’m not saying that what we do and what you do are directly comparable, or morally equivalent. But I am saying that I’m not really in a position to judge you. I guess if you deserve it, then so do I.”

“Pretty noble of you,” he says.

“Well, some of us pride ourselves in having morals.” She gets up. Pats him gently on the shoulder. The momentary flinch of his muscles does not escape her; the trust between them has not yet been fully restored. “We’re leaving in an hour. It’ll be a lot easier if you come on your own terms.”

“You gonna shackle me if I don’t?” He’s grinning, but there’s precious little humour. He is cornered, angry; he is also strangely resigned, like he knows all of this is his own fault, that his criminal excesses were always going to catch up to him in the end.

She looks at him, raggedy scarecrow man, nominally clean but still a little soot-smeared, clothes frayed and stiff with dirt; at the composition of his body, lean muscle and sharp bone, concave waist, a man who has learned to withstand hunger. At his artificial limbs, the scrim of rust half-hidden by garish paintwork; a myriad of dents and pockmarks, the hallmark of heavy wear. “What did you do with all the stuff you stole?” she asks.

“Hm?”

“The banks you robbed. All the stuff you nicked. What did you do with it? I mean, your clothes are barely wearable, you look like you haven’t seen a hot meal in months and your limbs are basically scrap. So what did you spend it on? Fancy hotels, fast cars, casinos? Large quantities of cocaine?”

He stares up at her, mystified. “We didn’t do anything with it,” he says, as though this is a perfectly reasonable use of illicit wealth. “Well. A couple of ice-creams here and there. Got to keep Roadie happy. Most of it’s in storage.”

“In _storage?_ ”

“Oh, sure. Not all in the same place, obviously. I’m not a total drongo.” He scrunches his nose in concentration, counting with the fingers of his mechanical hand: “There’s a cache in Singapore, one in Berlin, another in Venezuela – you ever been to Venezuela? Amazing beaches. Almost as good as home. The good beaches at home, anyway, not the irradiated shitholes. Crabs the size of dogs.” He draws his palms apart, indicating something approximately the size of a beagle. “Chase you for miles, narky little bastards.”

She blinks. “You must have hundreds of thousands stashed away. _Millions_ , maybe, and you’re…you’re just sitting on it?”

This time, the laugh is genuine; his eyes light up like fire opals in sunlight. “What’m I supposed to do with that kind of money? Buy a fancy apartment in Sydney and live it up with the suits? Get myself an air purifier while everyone else in Junkertown chokes on the smog? Yeah, nah. We’re doing fine as we are, Hog and me. It’s all fun and games, right? Like I said, everyone’s got to have a hobby.”

“Stealing stuff isn’t a hobby, it’s a criminal enterprise.”

Junkrat shrugs. Turns back to the horizon, where the mid-morning sun is rising ever higher, bright and hot. “We’re thieves stealing from thieves,” he says, nonchalant. “Bit like a merry-go-round, except with money instead of horses. Hey, if I promise to do something good with it, will you drop all this ‘handing Junkrat over to Talon’ stuff? I could open an orphanage for puppies in your name.”

From below them comes the thunderous din of the hangar door sliding open. Tracer winces at the pitch; it’s going to take epic quantities of WD40 to fix that squeak. “Nobody’s handing you over to anyone,” she says, and hopes it won’t fall on deaf ears. “If you don’t trust them, at least trust me, okay?”

He thinks on this for a long, silent moment, twirling the goggles in his hand, strap hanging loose between his fingers. She almost expects him to tell her to go and do one, but then he gets to his feet, stamping out the remnants of the fire with the sole of his boot. “All right,” he says. “But only ‘cos it’s you. And only ‘cos I know Roadhog’ll melt the lot of you down into glue if anything happens to me. No offence,” he finishes, grinning lopsided.

“None taken,” she says, and grins back.

*

If McCree makes Tracer feel like a blushing, starstruck schoolgirl, then Amelie transports her straight back to her awkward, embarrassing teenage years – gawky, slump-shouldered and inarticulate, shouting brash punk slogans in lieu of having a real opinion on anything that mattered. Standing before Amelie she is human jelly, a quivering invertebrate powered solely by a heady mixture of sorrow and confused lust, adoring and resentful in equal measures. These days, she hates Amelie almost as much as she loves her.

She is resplendent before them, that much is undeniable; even Junkrat looks on the verge of a spontaneous nosebleed, and Tracer is reasonably sure he’s not inclined in that direction. She’s dressed in an outfit so sleek it might have been spraypainted on, heels like skyscrapers which, on anyone less assured than Amelie, might look precarious; her eyes are heavy-lidded and almost disinterested, cat-languid as she surveys the scene before her. It’s quietly devastating to compare this sour-faced facsimile of a woman – this _Widowmaker_ – to the Amelie she’d known before, whose laugh had been like birdsong.

Amelie extends a hand. Her long fingers uncurl. “You know what we want,” she says. ‘We’, because she is not alone; beside her, a tall, silent ghoul in a cloak and Halloween mask stands guard over a disgruntled and inconvenienced Ana Amari. She doesn’t seem especially intimidated by him, but something about his stature, his silence, the bone-white contours of his mask makes Tracer feel very uneasy.

She turns to Junkrat. Tips him a nod. “Hand it over,” she says.

He makes an admirable show of detaching his prosthetic; he punctuates the pantomime with bouts of reluctant sighing, glancing resentfully up at Tracer. He plays the vulnerable amputee well, she realises; she is used to his somewhat gung-ho attitude to his missing limbs, but the slump of his shoulders and the protective cage of his arms across his midsection telegraph a shame she knows he does not feel.

“No,” Amelie says, as he holds out the data chip. “This is not what we agreed.”

“You said he had something you wanted. This is it.” Tracer’s voice is steady, firm, revealing no hint of nervousness, though her insides feel like quicksand. “He doesn’t even understand what’s on it. He’s of no use to you.”

“And yet that was the deal.” The phantom does not speak so much as growl; his voice is a faraway thunderclap, the sound of broken ribs grating against punctured lungs. Standing before him, Ana does not flinch. Her expression is still as she gazes at Tracer. It is impossible to know how she is feeling, what she is thinking; she mastered the art of impassiveness-as-defence a long time ago. Unconsciously, Tracer’s fingers travel up her neck, pressing gently at the spot where the sleep dart broke the skin.

“This man is a wanted criminal,” Tracer says. Junkrat is hunched beside her, balancing expertly on one leg; there is something faintly avian about him, the expectant posture of a large, ungainly vulture lying in wait. “We want him brought to justice.”

There is no warmth in Amelie’s smile. “Bringing criminals to justice is my speciality,” she says, and the threat almost rolls off her tongue, a satisfied purr.

Tracer snorts. “Shooting people in the head isn’t justice,” she says. “Take the data chip. It’s what you really want, isn’t it? What good is an unwashed Junker going to do you? He’s a thief and a liar. He’s barely literate. The only thing you can trust about him is that he’ll give you a ton of grief.

“The more you refuse us, the more attractive a prospect he becomes.” Amelie appraises Junkrat with undisguised disdain, and Tracer can almost feel his hackles rise; _keep your temper,_ she thinks, and hopes the message will reach him somehow. “Are you so injured by the theft of your country’s trinkets, Lena? I did not think you were such a fragile little patriot.”

“Your reasoning is irrelevant.” The phantom’s accent is impenetrable; generic, drawn-out American. His mask is faintly reminiscent of a plague doctor’s. “Either we make the agreed trade, or we will take him by force and leave you with nothing. You are not in a position to bargain.”

This much, she reflects, is true; despite the communication specifying that all parties should arrive at the rendezvous unarmed it is plain as the nose on Junkrat’s face that Amelie is not carrying her rifle for shits and giggles. And out here, in this remote part of Tunisia – in this open-mouthed cavern, high and alone among the sun-scorched cliffs -  there is nobody to bat an eyelid at the dry crack of a rifle report echoing off the walls. She has no guns, no pulse-bomb; his grenade launcher is gathering dust on the communal dining table back at the Watchpoint. And Ana is an unstable variable, a bargaining chip they cannot afford to walk away without.

“Go on,” she says.

Junkrat looks up at her. “Eh?”

“Go.” Her throat is tight. Their eyes meet, very briefly; she turns her face away, electing instead to fix upon Amelie’s cold, satisfied gaze. “You’re lucky I even tried. It didn’t work. And you-” she waves a hand in the phantom’s direction, unintimidated by his strange, inhuman presence. “We make a straight swap, right here. Him for Ana. The minute he starts walking, you let her go.”

The phantom is utterly still. “I thought we had already established your inability to bargain.”

“We had,” Tracer agrees. Her heart is suddenly a bass drum deep in her gut, booming so loud she’s certain they must hear it. “And you were right. However, new information has come to light. You know how these things are, don’t you? Volatile situations like this, always prone to change. Right pain, isn’t it? ‘Cos you see…”

Junkrat rises slowly to his feet, perfectly on cue, a slow unfolding of preybird limbs, the arc of his shoulders straightening to reveal his full, intimidating height. Choreographed perfectly for maximum dramatic effect. In his palm, the dull blue-green of the data chip suddenly illuminates; a red, threatening light blinking at the epicentre of the device like a single eye.

“You see,” Tracer continues, “it turns out that Junkrat likes to dabble in blowing stuff up. And he’s pretty good at it. You’d know that if you’d paid attention to the specifics of his profile rather than salivating over the loot. And hey, guess what? It turns out it’s actually possible to rig a data chip to explode.”

Amelie’s eyes widen minutely. It’s the smallest of tells, but it’s enough for Tracer. She gestures towards Ana, who is watching her with something that might be appreciation. “When he walks,” she says, calmer now, “you let her go. Otherwise, the chip goes boom, and you get nothing.”

There is a moment of silence. Nobody moves. Even Junkrat is perfectly still, a ramshackle mannequin with a minute bomb nestled in the palm of his hand. Then the phantom speaks, and to Tracer’s amazement he sounds almost dumbfounded: “We could shoot you where you stand,” he says. “Between the eyes. You’d be dead within seconds. You and him both. It is only through sheer goodwill that the deal includes your life.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Is that a threat?”

“Disarm the bomb,” Amelie says, unholstering her rifle. “Do it now and I will consider the merits of not shooting you where you stand.”

“Can’t,” Junkrat says, cheerful. “Two minutes on the clock. Well. More like one minute twenty seconds after all this chinwagging. One minute nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen. Oi, you’ll wanna get clear of this, it’s got a hell of a kick and this cave doesn’t look too structurally sound, if you follow my meaning. Twelve. Eleven.”

“I won’t warn you again, Lena.” This time, there’s almost a hint of desperation in her voice, and Tracer isn’t sure if it’s the prospect of losing the chip or the prospect of losing control that’s driving Amelie. “We’re not playing silly Overwatch games any more. I will shoot you, and I will kill you. I want you to understand that.”

A final glance at Ana, who offers a single curt nod. “I understand, Amelie,” Tracer says, a little bitterly. “I understand completely and that’s why I can’t let you have what’s on that chip. If you’re going to shoot me for it, stop running your bloody mouth and have done with it.” She thumps a fist against her chest, adjacent to the accelerator. “Either way, you lose. You get nothing. So if you’re going to do it, just-”

The sound of the rifle is deafening in the confines of the cavern. It hits her in the chest like a hurtling train; she’s driven backwards by the sheer force of it, lifted clean into the air. She flies, and for a long moment it occurs to her that nothing hurts, that there isn’t enough air, that her mouth is wide open and she must look ridiculous.

She hits the cave floor with a sick thump. It feels as though every single one of her ribs has been shattered, that her chest cavity is full of bone fragments, rattling inside of her like broken china; she tries desperately to pull in a breath but there is nothing, only fire in her lungs. A trembling hand fumbles frantically at her chest, fingers slick with blood, and all she can think is _she did it, she actually shot me, fucking hell I never thought…_

“Tracer!” She’s aware of the click-thud of his feet on the cave floor, running towards her at speed. Her fingers materialise before her face; her hand seems disembodied, scarlet with blood that surely cannot be hers. All of a sudden, she feels very far away; there are so many noises, but none of them make any sense: someone is shouting in a language she doesn’t understand, and someone else is very calmly explaining that a bomb is about to go off at any moment, and perhaps they ought to consider getting away-

She realises that Junkrat is speaking directly into her ear.

“You’re okay,” he says. His arm is like cord around her shoulders, taut and strong as he eases her shoulders up. She can barely make out his features; at this range he looks like a Picasso painting. “She missed all your vital bits. You’re just a little cut up, that’s all.”

“She wouldn’t miss,” Tracer says. “She never misses.” Her voice sounds like it’s coming from the other end of a bad phone line, the kind they had to use back in London when the omnics scrambled all the digital signals. She runs her hand up her torso, feeling her way across wet fabric, the sharp contours of her own supine body; the sting of lacerations pulls her back to herself as her fingers disturb torn flesh. No bullet wound yet. Up she goes, finger-walking laboriously across her sternum, and-

“Your time-thing,” Junkrat says. “Is that bad?”

“Run,” Tracer says. “They’ll-”

“Nan’s handling it,” he says, and somehow she can hear his wry grin. “Tough old bird. Keeps tranq darts in funny places.”

She traces the shattered glass with her thumb. The pulse of the reactor is weak, cold; without the glass to contain it the energy is dissipating into thin air. “It’s not great,” she mutters. There’s a moment of dizzying motion as Junkrat pulls her up, warm skin and cold metal, the smell of coal tar and sun-scorched Gibraltarian dust. She feels herself drifting in time. She feels the sharp jut of his ribs against her legs.

“We’ve got twenty seconds,” he says, a little apologetically. “We’re going to have to fly.”

“Muh,” she replies.

The concussion mine clatters as he drops it to the floor. He swears under his breath; she can hear the scuffle of his leg as he attempts to hit the switch. “You trust me, right?” he says. He sounds like he might be galaxies away but his metal fingers are tight around her wrist, and the crook of his neck is bony and inhospitable. “Right. So hold on, yeah?”

Gravity is torn rudely out from beneath them like a rug. The wind is loud in her ears, and through the haze she can see the ground disappearing; the mouth of the cave growing smaller, thin air underfoot and below that, the ravine a straight drop down. For a moment she thinks they’re going to plummet, they’re going to die, and there’s a small, selfish thought: _if I blink out of time before I hit the ground, I probably won’t die at all._ And then they’re falling, and a sudden peal of elated laughter emerges from his mouth like strange music. The outcrop beneath them is just wide enough to hold them both; she has no idea how he could have known, but it barely matters, because just as they are about to hit the ground she finally blinks, and the present ceases to be her problem entirely.

*

She drifts in and out. It’s not quite unconsciousness; when she’s not _here_ , she’s somewhere else, only that somewhere exists on the periphery of time. It is neither the past nor the future but all of it at once, the sensation of drifting in calm seas while the world turns at random overhead: morning is superseded by midnight in the blink of an eye, usurped in turn by noon. Constellations shift and change like raindrops on a windowpane. Nothing matters, because everything has already happened. Nothing matters because nothing has happened yet.

There is a voice.

She can’t make sense of the words; the syllables dance, rearranging themselves, flying in the face of temporal sense. A simple sentence becomes a spoken-word anagram. She listens carefully, sensing the direction of the voice. Someone is close by. There’s a cadence to the nonsense that seems oddly familiar. She drifts; she is an astronaut untethered and alone in the infinity of space, a small bird buoyed up on unfamiliar thermals. Sometimes, she thinks it’s better here, where conflict and fear and pain are as alien as the linear passing of the hours, the days.

And then the voice is in her ear, and she understands what it is saying:

“Back again, eh? How about you stick around this time?”

She blinks. The world has temporarily solidified; there is dry rock, the fading heat of a setting sun. There is a long man whose hair is on fire.

“I keep drifting away,” she says, in a voice she only vaguely recognises as her own.

“No shit,” he replies. He’s strangely calm. People don’t usually respond so casually to her literally fading in and out of time. “How long have you got?”

She blinks. She can feel the sweat drying on her skin. The static fuzz of a dead leg. “I don’t know,” she says. “Sometimes it’s minutes, sometimes hours. Sometimes it’s only a few seconds. I don’t get to choose.”

“Right. Anything I can do?”

The sky overhead is darkening; the western horizon is the deep crimson of a fresh wound. They must have been sitting up here a while. “Physical contact helps,” she says, recalling those early days – Winston and Mercy in tandem, the warmth of their hands like a beacon in the dark, guiding her home. And it _was_ home. It had taken a near-fatal accident to make her realise it. “If you hold my hand…it helps me find my way back.”

“Righto.” Junkrat threads his fingers through hers; her entire hand fits in the hollow shell of his palm. His skin is warm; not fever-hot, but a pleasant, sunbaked sort of warmth. He’s studying her with benign curiosity, but there is no pity, and she is absurdly grateful for this. “Sniper nan got out of the cave all right. Reckon she must’ve tranq’d the buggers. She went off to alert the others, request an evac.”

“How long ago was that?”

He shrugs. “Hour or so, maybe a bit more. Ship’s a long way away though, and she’s no spring chicken. Probably explains why she’s taking her sweet time, eh?”

A sudden temporal lurch. She feels it like an abrupt vertical descent, like waking sharply from sleep to the sensation of falling. “I’m going again,” she says, though she doesn’t have to; her hand has gone transparent, the callused skin of his palm visible through her fingers. “Talk to me. Please.”

He frowns. “About what?”

“Anything. Anything you like. I just need to know you’re still there.” He’s fading away now, sinking into the mire; his hair flickers like a distant forest fire. “Tell me about Australia. What it was like there after the war.”

She hears the depth of his sigh; feels it in the sharp press of his ribs against her side. “Okay,” he says, after a moment. “I s’pose you probably think you know what’s it’s like there. I’ve seen what you lot get on the news. You see all those sparkly towns on the coast, all the new buildings going up in Sydney. I’ll bet you probably think we’re recovering pretty well from the whole ‘near annihilation’ deal, right?”

A nod. It’s hard to control her body, now; she no longer feels corporeal, a mass of shimmering particles banding together to create the illusion of something physical. “That’s the impression I get, yes.”

“Heh. You’re not totally wrong. Just mostly wrong. See, those shiny cities on the coast? That’s where all the money is. They can afford to rebuild, purify the air and the water, all that jazz. You go to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, you’d think nothing ever happened.” A thin, mirthless smile, teeth bared. “They don’t ever talk about Junkertown.”

She squeezes his hand. He squeezes back. She is reassured that she exists, still. “Talk to me about it,” she says. Her other hand rests on the shattered casing of the chronal accelerator. The glass presses into the soft flesh of her palm, grazing the skin like teeth. “I’m going away now, but I’ll hear you where I’m going. So tell me.”

The world recedes. In this grey, liminal space, his voice echoes.

*

“You know why I’m called Junkrat? It’s not my birth name, but it might as well be. They’ve been calling me it since I was old enough to understand it. In Junkertown, there’s two ways to make a decent living: you find something to sell, or you sell yourself. I figured out early that scavenging was my best bet. Face like this don’t make much money. Heh. Besides, I was always a scrawny kid. Small and skinny. I had an advantage over the other Junker kids. I could get into small spaces, weasel in to find the really good treasure. And I was fearless, you know, the way kids. Fearless and stupid. Didn’t understand what danger was. And there’s a lot of that in Junkertown.

It’s not just people you’ve got to be afraid of, see? There’s a million ways to die. Junkertown’s way out in the Outback, right? Even before the omnium it was kind of a shitty place to live. Some parts of the world just ain’t made for people, y’know? They reckon that 80% of people, animals and plants died when the omnium went kaboom, and not all of ‘em right away. Omnium radiation’s different to nuclear radiation, but it kills you slow and nasty just the same. Those who didn’t die came out of it with hell and all problems. You see that mask Hog wears? It ain’t a fashion statement. His face is seriously mangled. Like, ‘horror film special effects’ mangled. Radiation burns like you wouldn’t believe. His throat got burnt up too, so he breathes through a filter. Stops him getting sick all the time. Don’t tell him I told you about his face, ‘kay? He reckons it’s important to keep the mystery alive. People take you seriously when you wear a big fuckin’ mask, he says, and I’m not about to argue. I like my spine where it is. Heh.

What was I…oh yeah. so if the omnium and the radiation and the people and the giant bastard spiders don’t kill you, the next best way to die is to cut yourself on something, or catch the ‘flu. Junkertown doesn’t have medicine the way you lot do. Hog says that in the early days you’d get people from all around the world trying to help, airdropping medical supplies and water purifying tablets and stuff. Problem was, pretty much none of the survivors wanted to evac. They took one look at the state of Australia – at how the ‘bots who almost wiped us clean off the planet’d been given jobs, identities, whole fucking neighbourhoods in the clean zones – and they said no bloody thank you.

I guess my parents must’ve said no too. Fat lot of good it did them.

What was I saying? Oh yeah. So they called me ‘Junkrat’ ‘cos I was small and skinny and good at scavenging. In those days there’d always be someone looking to take a cut of your profits, so I got savvy pretty fast. I’d hoard junk and ration it out. Only sell a little at a time, mix in the good stuff with plenty of worthless crap. Nobody looks twice in your direction. Worked great right up until I found that fucking data chip.

Everyone in Junkertown hates omnics. You grow up hating them. It’s just normal, y’know? You learn it at your mum’s knee. Assuming you have a mum, heh. Don’t drink from the river, don’t ever try to pet a dingo, the omnics are bastards. And yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking well, wasn’t it stupid fucking _humans_ who blew up the omnium? Didn’t you lot do this to yourself?

Hog told me a bit about what it was like before. He was a solar farmer, can you believe that? A fucking farmer. Shacked up there after the war, made a living selling electricity back to the energy companies. You could do that, then, because the whole bloody country was a shambles and the cities needed electricity. He says that when the Prime Minister signed the omnium and all the surrounding land to the ‘bots it was like a boot in the face. Like shaking hands with the bloke who burned your house down with your kids inside, he said. They blew up the omnium ‘cos the only other choice was to live side by side with the ‘bots. Seeing them every day. They wiped out almost two-thirds of Australia’s population. Should’ve booted the lot of them into the sea, let the fuckers short-circuit and drown.”

(She gathers all of her energy, focuses it in the direction of his space and time: a weak whimper of a squeeze, but he squeezes back, and for a brief moment she can see him: he is flushed and angry, brow furrowed, chin set on the bony shelf of his knees. She has never thought of him as beautiful, and indeed he is not, but there is something undeniably fascinating about the way he is put together, the dissonant angles of his face like an abstract painting. An elegant alien with eyes like topaz, burning with barely contained rage as he recounts this part of his history.)

“They’re not all the same,” she says.

“You don’t understand,” he replies. A dismissive wave of his mechanical hand. “When you grow up in Junkertown, that’s the world. Nobody from Junkertown ever expects to end up anywhere else. Most of ‘em are mutants, or sick, or disfigured. Plenty of ‘em are nutters.” He taps his skull with one finger, indicating his own brain with a wry grin. “All we ever know about the ‘bots is what we learn as kids, and what we see as adults. And none of that’s good.”

“You’ve met Zenyatta. There are others like him.” She looks up. It’s still not full dark; she intuits that she can’t have been away for very long. “Most of them just want to live normal lives. Can you blame them?”

“They almost destroyed us.”

“But they didn’t. We fought back. We almost destroyed _them_. The score’s nil-nil to both of us, when you take everything into account. We won the war, but both sides lost. Can’t you see that?”

He gives a sharp little shrug. “Saw plenty of dead folks,” he says, sullen. “Graveyards big as football pitches all over the Outback. Difficult to see past that.”

“There were omnic terrorists in London. After the war.” Her first Overwatch mission, still fondly remembered in spite of the violence and destruction; the first time Winston had let her go out into the world since her accident. She’d been terrified. Elated. “They wanted equal rights. I didn’t disagree with them, but their actions…it didn’t exactly foster goodwill. Every person dead by Null Sector hands served to recruit a hundred more people to the anti-omnic cause. And there were a lot of dead people.” She shakes her head. “But…I always believed, even then, that we could live side by side. Even seeing the things I’d seen.”

“You lose anyone?” He’s watching her now, expression carefully neutral. It feels like he’s measuring her. Judging her.

“No. Did you? Apart from your parents, I mean?”

He lifts his mechanical arm. Gestures to his leg with rusting fingers. “Cut my arm scavenging in the omnium. I was nine. Went septic fast. Don’t remember much of it. When I woke up, the arm was gone and that was that.”

“And the leg?”

He smirks. “Blame Roadie for that one. Used to travel about on this bike of his. Ancient thing, surprised it ever worked at all. Stupid thing went nuts, threw us both right off, into a ditch. Shattered my shin bone. We were on the run by then, so checking in to the hospital wasn’t an option. Tried to splint it, but it never properly healed.” He taps his leg with his index finger. Empty now of the data chip, which now resides in an Overwatch safe. “Roadie did the amputation himself.”

Her mind connects a series of conversational dots: no medicine, no hospitals. No anaesthetic. Amputation. The horror must register starkly on her face, because Junkrat cackles wildly, nudging her conspiratorially with his shoulder. “Listen, but don’t tell the others, right? ‘Cos I sort of told them something different when they asked.”

She frowns. “What did you say?”

He ticks the list off on his fingers. “I told Cowboy I lost ‘em wrestling crocs for money. Angelface thinks I sold them on the medical black market. And I told the loud German fella I got kidnapped by cannibals.”

A peal of spluttered, horrified laughter. “You told him _what?”_

“It happens! I swear! Just…not to me.” Finally, he’s smiling, and she is too. And just like that it feels like the rift between them is nothing but an old, long-healed scar. “Can’t let them think they’ve got me figured out. It’s like Hog and his mask, y’know? And you with your time gadget. Got to have a little mystery.”

“It’s nice that you have him,” she says. “I’d like to have something like that someday.”

Junkrat looks puzzled. “What, a bodyguard?”

“You’re not married?”

His eyes widen. She realises she has made a terrible error, misinterpreted everything, and she is about to release a tidal wave of apologies but he wraps an arm around her shoulder, crushes her close enough that she can feel the vibrations of the laughter in his chest. “Fuck!” he says, choking through his own helpless laughter. Tears of mirth stream down his cheeks. “Married! Shit, he’s going to have an aneurysm when I tell him.”

Tracer’s cheeks are aflame with embarrassment. Now, she thinks, would be the perfect time to drift, but it seems that time intends for her to ride out the soul-crushing mortification of this moment. “Junkrat, _no_.”

“Junkrat _yes_ ,” he replies, gleeful. “You can’t just insult me like that and _not_ let me have fun with it. Christ, you really think my taste in men is _that_ bad? Yeah, nah. I’m gonna start introducing him as my husband and he is going to go fucking _nuts._ ” He exhales, ragged; his eyes are bright with amusement. “You and that sniper,” he begins.

“No,” she replies. “She never…she was married. To a man.”

“Ah.” Junkrat relaxes his grip; his arm is loose around her shoulders, but companionable. “Never mind, eh? Plenty more out there.” A chill wind has sprung up from the ravine below, and his skin radiates a comfortable heat. They sit like that for a while, silent and contemplative. Staring up at the sky, in which a point of light has begun to bloom in the near distance; the warm, familiar lights of the Overwatch jet scything through the gathering dark.

“My real name’s Jamison,” Junkrat says, as he helps her to her feet. “Jamie’s fine. I mean. Junkrat’s fine too. Whatever you like.”

“It’s nice,” she says, sincerely. “It suits you.”

The dust around them stirs as the jet approaches. She shields her eyes, squinting up at the lights. His hand is still on her shoulder, anchoring her in the present. Maybe he’ll stay after all, she thinks, watching him wave to signal their position, his hair an unlikely beacon glowing bright. Maybe it’ll do him good to belong somewhere, _really_ belong, for the first time in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you Em (& Shoi!) for the sprints, the timeline help & the encouragement. And thanks to everyone who has read, commented and otherwise encouraged me to keep writing this - thanks a million for your kindness, your support & your patience.
> 
> (for more Overwatch goodness, check out ["Recursion"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9380129) for unexpectedly sexy mindgames and reluctant James Bond-esque rolepaying between Hanzo & Mercy. And [Candescence](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9496943) for dark and delicious McCree & Reaper-centric angst and worldbuilding.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Em for encouraging me to write & post this, and to everyone else for tolerating my weird fascination for trashmouse and his cheerful pyromania. And thanks to you for reading it. It's just a way for me to explore interesting possibilities and weave complicated backstories into the present day, and I really hope you enjoyed it.


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